Musings On The Day
Dec. 15th, 2010 01:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ladyspriteIt's my birthday today. I'm older than I ever thought I'd be, and that's... an odd feeling.
When I was growing up, I decided that I wouldn't live past thirty. I wasn't a very happy kid, and I had watched my great-grandmother fall apart at her mental seams from dementia. I knew that, for large chunks of my family, our bodies tended to last a lot longer than our brains, and I didn't ever want that to happen to me.
I had things that I wanted to accomplish with my life, but when I sat down and thought about it, I realized that if I stayed on track I would be finished with all of them (move to Boston, go to college, be a veterinarian) by the time I was 30. So I just figured that that would be it - I'd make it to 30, do everything I wanted to do, and then there wouldn't be much of anything left, I wouldn't miss anything, and I'd just.... stop. I wouldn't live past that. And while this was mostly a joke, there was a lot of truth in it too. My mental image of my life always stopped there.
And then thirty came, and there were enough other major life changes going on around it - getting married, changing my name, quitting my job, starting my own business - that it was just one more little change in among everything else. While it registered on my mental and emotional radar, it wasn't nearly as major a moment as I had thought it would be. By the time my self-identity truly updated to register that I was past my self-imposed expiration date, it was almost a year later.
And then there were other goals, and other big life moments. Mountains to be climbed and houses to buy and shows to rehearse for and crises to maneuver through, and the passage of time just kind of drifted past me. Until I wound up here.
I don't know why, but for some reason this year I'm suddenly realizing how old I am. I never wanted to be this age, and I don't know quite how I feel about it. I'm old enough that, if my life had taken a different path, I could be the parent of a high school student. I'm old enough that I've spent almost as much time after college as I did before it. I've known my husband more than half my life. I identify more with the parents than the kids when I watch movies or read books. Magazines tell me that I should start Botox treatments ASAP, and that I need special creams and potions to get rid of the lines around my eyes. People tell me that my hairstyle is "inappropriate for my age."
I know that, to a lot of the people reading this, I'm still just a babe in arms. I know I'm not Old. But... I'm older than my image of myself, and that's just starting to hit home.
I don't want to stop being here. As much as the idea may be appealing sometimes, I'm still very much in love with the world and my place in it, and I'd rather get old and have fun than die young and avoid any risks. Especially this year, when death has been such a constant specter in the lives of my family and friends, I want to cling to every minute allotted to me. And I suppose that it's fairly telling that the mental and emotional repercussions of leaving my 20's are only just starting to hit me now, at 36.
I guess I just need to decide whether I want to recalibrate my mental image at all - whether it's more inappropriate and embarrassing to keep on thinking of myself as young, or more depressing and limiting to think of myself as mature. And what the hell does that even mean, anyway? I have no interest at all in becoming sedentary, or giving up my long hair or my nerdy-kid hobbies and interests... but at the same time, I don't want to be one of those awkward frozen-in-time people who still wear miniskirts and haunt college campuses and hang out with teenagers when they really ought to have moved on.
I don't know. I don't even know what questions to ask, right now....
When I was growing up, I decided that I wouldn't live past thirty. I wasn't a very happy kid, and I had watched my great-grandmother fall apart at her mental seams from dementia. I knew that, for large chunks of my family, our bodies tended to last a lot longer than our brains, and I didn't ever want that to happen to me.
I had things that I wanted to accomplish with my life, but when I sat down and thought about it, I realized that if I stayed on track I would be finished with all of them (move to Boston, go to college, be a veterinarian) by the time I was 30. So I just figured that that would be it - I'd make it to 30, do everything I wanted to do, and then there wouldn't be much of anything left, I wouldn't miss anything, and I'd just.... stop. I wouldn't live past that. And while this was mostly a joke, there was a lot of truth in it too. My mental image of my life always stopped there.
And then thirty came, and there were enough other major life changes going on around it - getting married, changing my name, quitting my job, starting my own business - that it was just one more little change in among everything else. While it registered on my mental and emotional radar, it wasn't nearly as major a moment as I had thought it would be. By the time my self-identity truly updated to register that I was past my self-imposed expiration date, it was almost a year later.
And then there were other goals, and other big life moments. Mountains to be climbed and houses to buy and shows to rehearse for and crises to maneuver through, and the passage of time just kind of drifted past me. Until I wound up here.
I don't know why, but for some reason this year I'm suddenly realizing how old I am. I never wanted to be this age, and I don't know quite how I feel about it. I'm old enough that, if my life had taken a different path, I could be the parent of a high school student. I'm old enough that I've spent almost as much time after college as I did before it. I've known my husband more than half my life. I identify more with the parents than the kids when I watch movies or read books. Magazines tell me that I should start Botox treatments ASAP, and that I need special creams and potions to get rid of the lines around my eyes. People tell me that my hairstyle is "inappropriate for my age."
I know that, to a lot of the people reading this, I'm still just a babe in arms. I know I'm not Old. But... I'm older than my image of myself, and that's just starting to hit home.
I don't want to stop being here. As much as the idea may be appealing sometimes, I'm still very much in love with the world and my place in it, and I'd rather get old and have fun than die young and avoid any risks. Especially this year, when death has been such a constant specter in the lives of my family and friends, I want to cling to every minute allotted to me. And I suppose that it's fairly telling that the mental and emotional repercussions of leaving my 20's are only just starting to hit me now, at 36.
I guess I just need to decide whether I want to recalibrate my mental image at all - whether it's more inappropriate and embarrassing to keep on thinking of myself as young, or more depressing and limiting to think of myself as mature. And what the hell does that even mean, anyway? I have no interest at all in becoming sedentary, or giving up my long hair or my nerdy-kid hobbies and interests... but at the same time, I don't want to be one of those awkward frozen-in-time people who still wear miniskirts and haunt college campuses and hang out with teenagers when they really ought to have moved on.
I don't know. I don't even know what questions to ask, right now....
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Date: 2010-12-16 04:17 am (UTC)I don't want to be one of those awkward frozen-in-time people who[...] haunt college campuses[...] when they really ought to have moved on.
When I walked into the classroom for the first lecture in Fundamentals of Public Speaking back in August, the instructor hadn't arrived yet, and the kids immediately quieted down a little; it took me a moment to realize that it was because they thought I was the instructor.
Who turned out, when she did arrive a few moments later, to be a grad student, 25, 26 years old.
I felt vaguely uneasy for the rest of that... well, I'll let you know if it goes away, actually, it hasn't yet.
What's really going to be funny is if I actually manage to get all the way through this adventure, I'll be turning up for entry-level engineering job interviews. With my grey beard. At least you haven't got that to contend with. :)
But yeah, it's been popping into my head more and more often lately that when my dad was the age I am now, I already had my driver's license and everything. I turned my back for a couple of minutes, and suddenly my grandparents are in their 80s, I mean, what?
I can see only one viable course of action. We're going to have to spin the planet backward.
Or, failing that, you could buy an unsuitable hat and learn to enjoy telling the people who criticize your hairstyle that you have socks older than they are. I'm kind of reaching the point now, exacerbated by my daily dealings with actual college-age people, where I'm a bit looking forward to being genuinely old, apart from the inconvenient fact that it'll be at the wrong end of my lifespan. But they keep telling me medical science will have that cracked by the time I get there, if I can avoid being hit by a bus in the meantime! :)
Oh, and: happy birthday, and for the record, if it wouldn't get me pummelled, I still totally would. ;)