So, I'm going to turn 48 in less than two weeks. I can deal with that. It's 50 I've been dreading. 50 kinda feels like 30 somehow. I was depressed for weeks before I turned 30. No exaggeration.
Turning 30 is like you're finally grown up. In your twenties, you're still "young." Like, young enough to feel like your teen years have barely cooled off yet. When you turn 30 you have to admit that you're an adult and join the adult world and leave behind childish things. But once you get over that, you realize that your 30s are pretty cool. It's the time of life when most people are in their prime. It's the time of life when most people, if they're going to, start to make their mark on the world.
Turning 40 was great...it's like being an adult with extras. First of all, for women anyway, there's that whole Mrs. Robinson thing. Younger men seem to think that women in their 40s are sexy and practically line up at your door to get in your good graces. In your 40s you start to realize that you don't really care what other people think of you. You start to like yourself a lot more than you ever have before. And you begin to come into your wisdom. Life starts to make sense and you stop worrying so much about making a mark on the world and start enjoying life for its own sake.
The only problem with the 40s is that it's right before the 50s. Otherwise, it's the best time of life.
Now...50s. I'm not looking forward to that. That's true middle age. I imagine women who have given up their youth but aren't yet old. Women with gray hair and comfortable shoes and husbands who are starting to die of heart attacks and parents who are dying if all kinds of things, and starting to attend a lot of funerals. In your fifties you can't pretend retirement isn't right around the corner and you start to worry if you'll have enough to retire on. In your fifties you become much less employable and you may want to think twice about quitting your job, even if you hate it and it's turning you into a miserable bitch. In your fifties, those aches and pains that started showing up in your 40s really start to become problems and you end up putting your doctor on speed dial. In your fifties, you're undeniably, irretrievably, irrevocably Middle-Aged.
Even the words Middle-Ages are depressing. Conjures up images of plagues and suffering and blight. Ugh. What's that spot on my arm?? Where'd that hair on my chin come from??
I'm not quite there yet, but the signs are starting to appear. I think menopause is starting. My moods have become really whacked out lately. I've never had PMS before, but this feels a lot like what I've heard described. Up and down like a roller coaster, and man, those downs are killer. After three years being completely single - three of the years in which I've supposedly been at my best - it's difficult to imagine things getting any better after turning 50. And the worst part is...I'm going to have to start having mammograms.
What's to look forward to in turning 50? I can't think of anything, can you?
Maybe I should get another cat.
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