One woman's story of why aging has been good for her.
I remember sitting in class in the 5th grade and hearing my math teacher ask us to calculate how old we would be at the turn of the century. Imagine my shock when I realized I was going to be 45 years old. Yikes!
At 10 years old, just the thought of being 45 was enough to make me want to laugh, cry, gag, and vomit all at once. It sounded perfectly awful at the time. The truth is, it has proven to be awfully perfect.
I’m not only over 40, I am over 50 (52 to be precise). Being a woman over 40 has become more of a growth experience and a growing experience than any of my pre-40 years. I have grown and continue to grow in ways I never would have imagined at 10 or 20 or 30, and almost none of them have to do with my clothing size. I no longer care what people think about my fashion sense or lack of lipstick. I have quit the futile effort to squeeze my body into a size 8. My butt is happier in pants than it ever was in a mini-skirt, and my feet are thrilled that I no longer sadistically jam them into trendy sandals or stiletto heels. I have traded in my contact lenses for my trusty old eyeglasses.
The wrinkles at the outside of my eyes are visual reminders of all the laughter I have experienced in my life, and the lines between my brows are not signs of old age but many years of concentration and thought.
I have never dyed my hair and don’t intend to start now. People tell me I don’t have a lot of gray hair and I would feel differently if I did. But I know they’re there. I see the white hairs on my head, and quite honestly, other parts of my body as well. I’m just not ashamed of them and feel there is no reason to hide them.
Oh, don’t misunderstand. There are things about being over 40 that are, in a word, annoying. Take, for instance, the aches and pains in my 50-year-old knees; pains I never even considered in my 20s and 30s. These, too, are reminders of a life well-lived. I may not be able to run the Boston Marathon with these creaking knees, but I never wanted to run the Boston Marathon when I was 20, so it’s all good.
I no longer question why things didn’t turn out the way I wanted them to or the way I thought they should. Things have turned out exactly the way they were supposed to. And now, as a woman over 40, I am finally really OK with it all. If a genie were to pop out of a magic lamp today to ask if I wanted to go back in time to a place where my butt was tighter and my waist smaller, I’d jam him back into that magic lamp and crazy-glue the cover shut. I am comfortable in my clothes these days, but more importantly, I am comfortable in my skin.