On Being 40

Last Day in My Thirties

Here is the thing - I never imagined myself at 40.  This could be due to several reasons, one of which is the depressing thought I had when younger that  - for no specific reason - I wasn't really sure I would live to be 40.  Another reason is that I just never imagined what I would be like when I got older.  Old.  And now that it is happening, and the number no longer permits denying it, I don't really like it.  I am not embracing it, as my healthier and perhaps more content self-assured friends are.

No matter which way you slice it, 40 sounds old when you are younger.  As a kid it sounds ancient (I mean my grandma BECAME a grandma at 34 years old so....).  And as a young adult it seems like forever from there.  And as an actual adult in your twenties and thirties it somehow still sounds like it will happen to someone else.  At least to me it did.  But here it is, happening to me - turning 40.

I am supposed to be wiser now.  But all I really know about being older is that it happens so fast.  One minute you are in high school and having those moments that will be burned into your memory forever about life, friendships and love.  The next you are in college and playing at being an adult and feeling so confident and brilliant that you will take over the world.  Then you are actually living as an adult with challenges and responsibilities for decision-making on real life issues like employment and relationships and housing.  And all through the decades, these decades that truly move by like fleeting moments, it feels as though at some point you will have it all figured out.  But the only thing you know for sure is that time is speeding up.  And before you know it you are that 17 year old, that 22 year old, that 30 year old, trapped in a body that is now 40.  Its confusing really.  Like waking up after a brief ride in a time machine.

So as I enter this new decade, I might actually be wiser, more mature, experienced, and certain skills like patience and thoughtfulness may have grown.  But also inside of me, in many way, I am still the same person I was 25 years ago.  The voice I hear in my head has not changed, in fact it sounds exactly the same - it has not grown older as my hair has grayed.

Being closer to 50 than I am to 20 makes no damn sense to me - and no matter how I try I have not yet been able to reconcile this in the inner monologue of my daily reflections, wants, and intentions.  Maybe I never will.  And it has nothing to do with a sense of achievement or success - I am so deeply satisfied with having lived in the present and gone balls to the wall in all that I have put my mind to.  I have a wonderful life that I am so incredibly thankful and proud for - not the least of which is my beautiful and joyful amazing son.  It is simply that despite all that my life has given me, I will never be young again.  I will never experience youth again, be considered young, or grouped in with that ridiculously optimistic, arrogant and un-jaded category of 20-somethings.  I will never again have my whole life ahead of me like an almost-blank slate.  Instead I will be called "Ma'am," I will be the "old" mom at my son's playground, and I will feel like Mrs. Robinson when I notice a super hot 20-year old.  And most of all I will have to be intentional in all that is ahead of me - knowing that 50 is right around the corner - and with the speed that time moves now I shouldn't waste a second of it.