The pursuit of youth is selfish, hungry, all-consuming, voracious. What is it about aging that brings even the most tenacious of us to quivering acolytes at the altar of Botox? Even those of us who have never been beautiful, always the proverbial other, sense the fleeting vespers of youth evaporate from our pores, feel the lessening of worth, of agency, of time. Oh, the visceral, Cronenberg-esque body horror of looking in the mirror only to find that the You that is You is unfamiliar, foreign, changed in a way that somehow lessens, even while all you have done is acquire wisdom, experiences, the riches of lived joys and traumas.
Aging is a hooded executioner leering at you from a darkened doorway. Aging is a wise forest crone giving you a knowing look as she offers you a cup of foraged, steaming tisane. Aging is passing through time like a dirty pillowcase filled with moldy oranges being flung down a set of stained, carpeted stairs. Aging is knowing yourself better than you ever have and being fed up with your own shenanigans. Aging is driving a car that needs you to top off random fluids at irregular intervals or else the electric windows won’t roll down, for no reason at all.
And the elephant in the room, of course, is that death is near. That we’re all dying from the moment we’re born and that the moment of our demise can be no more predicted than our first fuck, our children’s faces right after they’re born, the capacity for dystopian horrors that we’re conditioned into believing are just the way it is, even as the world smolders around us. The answer of course, is to carpe the proverbial motherfucking diem. ACTUALIZE! Do all of the things. I’ll list them for you, in no particular order of importance because, believe this, Friend; They are all of Great Personal Import:
Exercise
Hydrate
Meditate
Foster impeccable relationships
Journal
Set Goals
Reach the Goals
Exceed the Goals
Monetize the Goals
Earn More
Spend Less
Find Nirvana via Spirituality or Other Means
Travel Extensively
Document the Journey
Monetize the Journey Documentation
Learn New Things Every Day
Tell Others How to Learn
Monetize the Telling
Don’t Forget to Stay Fucking Hydrated
Take Another Walk
And it goes on, in a circular pattern, ad nauseum. It goes on. If you aren’t walking, hydrating, moisturizing, actualizing at all times of day, what are you even doing? Really. What exactly are you doing?
So youth, dying, actualizing. All wonderful topics for party conversation if you wish for others to avoid you like that decrepit uncle who wants to talk politics at Thanksgiving. Parties. Family Thanksgiving gatherings. Are these even things real people actually still do, or are they Norman Rockwell memories of quaint socialization rituals that have since gone the way of pensions, lost to the cruelty of a history that none of us penned?
But as our corpses meander through this period of pre-decay, we cling to the formative visual engravings of how we looked before an indeterminate time in the past that we were the most acceptable versions of ourselves that we’ve ever been. As I tell my son, I had a Hot Girl Summer. That is the most beautiful I will ever be. I am grateful that there are photographs. He tells me I looked like Regina George from Mean Girls. I don’t see it. I look at the photos and remember how I felt when they were taken. The constant feelings of insecurity, for even after losing almost 200 lbs., I felt fat. (How does one even “feel” fat, which is more a state of being than an emotion?) My tanned skin, my blond, wavy hair, cute figure, smashing smile, and coterie of adoring friends and even a spicy, Latin lover didn’t clue me in to the fact that this was it. This was the Hot Girl Summer. I look back on the haze of weed smoke, the constant crowding into hotboxed, used cars with friends and strangers, the random, steamy sex with said Latin lover several times a day, the drunken nights and no-hangover mornings and I wonder how I didn’t notice that I had my youth like a tiger by the tail. I’m sure I had money woes at the time, but fuck me if I can remember any of them. They didn’t matter because we were busy living life at a breakneck, frenzied speed, as afraid as I was of my own power.
Here is how today contrasts: Constant, stable love courses like a category 2 river rapid through my days. I love and I am loved. I have a husband, two children who I love in a way that defies words. There are no words. They are a part of me, a part of this existence that I personify while I travel through time. There is no ending or beginning, they are me. Or at the very, most reductively, least way possible, a part of me. I see my face age in the mirror, my body moving clumsily and awkwardly through the second puberty that is menopause. My first puberty and my second pregnancy managed to contain a modicum of grace, but not my first pregnancy, not menopause. I traverse the eventualities like an inflatable dinghy beating itself against the jetties in a stormy sea. No grace whatsoever. Seagulls shit upon my hull and I wonder if I’ll make it out of this alive. I know that I will, but damn if I know how just yet.
So I take hormone pills, anxiety pills. I have my husband shoot me up with diabetes meds even though my blood sugar is fine and always has been. It’s all to feel better, to be sure, but I’d be liar if I didn’t confess that I want it to make me look, make me feel like I was younger, that I have a never ending hallway of open doors in front of me instead of the prospect of hundreds of thousands of dollars in college expenses, a 30 year mortgage, and an unspecified pre-loaded debt for retirement income in front of me. Roots grant stability, longevity, but they are double-edged: They grant stability, longevity.
I’m not sorry about how things have turned out. I planned for this. I did all of the things. I got the degree, got married, had the 2 children, bought the house and the cars, got the dog, have a “good” job. I did the things I had planned to do. My efforts, and some luck (being born into familiar and financial security as a cisgender, straight white woman) afforded me comforts, many comforts. And now I put the VHS tape in the machine, press play, and watch the movie run its course, even as my own celluloid visage turns garish and feeble in the final act. Even as my closeup is encumbered by a thick smear of Vaseline on the camera lens. Even as my denouement is prolonged with face creams and injections and better living through chemistry, and maybe, just maybe, a prolific amount of sauvignon blanc. Even as I begin to wear my eccentricity like a cozy mantle after I’ve just removed my bra and let my sagging breasts pursue their wayward descent, I am ready for my closeup, Mr. DeMille.