To Women of a Middling Age

Last week, amid much fanfare — fanfare that I actively encouraged and participated in, I turned 40.

There are a whole host of things that happened in and around turning 40 that will surprise absolutely no one over the age of 40, but I’ll say a little something about them here because I, like you of less than 40 years, thought they would not happen to me.

• Approximately three months, ago I checked the dosage on the side of an Advil bottle and was unable to pick out any singular letter or word. Twas naught but an impressionist painting of a medicine label.
• Related, I recently found myself in the basement of a CVS looking over a collection of Foster Grant readers wondering if I looked interesting or like Professor McGonagall in the earlier, lower budget Harry Potter films.
• My nipples, which have been transitioning from north facing to more forward facing over the last 10 years are now firmly on a southbound journey.
• I drank more than two cocktails on a school night and then slept through a meeting. Through it. I was not late. I was absent.
• Random folks have inquired about my perspectives on some “last minute” reproductive adventures. A quick bonus baby to kick off the second half of my life.
• I got the flu and the unfathomable horror of a relentless high fever, sinus pain, and a sleep-restricting cough was nothing to the horror of having to sleep with a $60 bath towel between my legs because I can no longer cough without fully urinating on myself.
• I dropped off the last few fucks I gave.
• I started to really come to terms with the beauty and power of knowing what you want to say “no” to, even if you’re not entirely certain what you want to say “yes” to.

I have no intention of getting maudlin: for one, I don’t think 40 is old. But I also think it is critical to separate the joy of birthdays from the consistent grief of aging. Getting older is inarguably a gift — the privilege of more time in a finite existence is to be celebrated — but we often find ourselves conflating our joy with our grief. We aren’t able to celebrate the passage of time without grieving the shortening of our existence. It’s natural, but it doesn’t give us the space we need to feel all the birthday feelings. I am a better 40 year old than I was a 30 year old. This version of me is more thoughtful and understanding, not only of others but of myself. And while there are eras and physical versions of myself that I love to remember fondly, there is not a single age I would return to. This is cause for joy, gratitude, reflection. Here, at this age, I have perspective about myself and my human context that I… love.

But being a 40 year old woman is also so goddamned hard. Because while I love this version, I feel like I am learning to how to be female again in these years when youth is fading the strongest. Beauty and youth are powerful currencies and living the transition from young to middling has made reluctant philosophers of many of us.

It was easy to be young and hot. It was also fun. The reason we accuse women of sleeping their way to the top is because we acknowledge that beauty and sexual prowess can make some of life’s challenges go away. When you’re young and hot, you don’t always have to do it the hard way. When you’re a youthful sparkly object, you don’t always have to be the best conversationalist. You just get to be sparkly.

I think it’s important to be honest: I was never that hot. But I shamelessly used youth like a weapon when it was available to me. That also makes this all the more salient. Even as a just sort of hot person, there is still this Middling Period whereby we find ourselves clawing at dewy skin and tighter bodies, while listening to the seductive tune of natural hair color and Eileen Fisher boiled wool… anything. Some of my friends have chosen to spend these Middling Years capturing their youth, others have chosen to settle into something else. Others are wandering about, much like I am, feeling attractive and young-ish, but confused. Will I buy a surprisingly slutty bikini or something resembling an 1860s bathing costume? The answer: both. Sometimes in the same night.

In many ways, it feels like that summer between senior year of high school and freshman year of college. You’re of neither place: the glories and hallmarks of one may have all or no bearing on the paths laid out in front of you. You know that adulthood is coming, but what is to be done but stand and ponder? You hold tight to friends who make you feel safe, while holding space for friends who will make you something different from what they found. And while you want to be grown, you also want to be held by your mom when you foolishly drink wine coolers and jump on a trampoline.

To be a woman of Middling Years is to be a woman of infinite transitions and complicated gray spaces. Those of body, of mind, of soul, of awareness, of passions, of love. But it is also to be a woman of confusion and wonder, hopefulness and fear. A body that can give birth, but a mind that knows menopause is on the horizon. A sexuality that is fully online with tits headed south for the winter. The money for Jimmy Choo with feet that demand HOKAs. A belief that we are our most interesting, our most evolved, and our most capable in a society that has moved on to something a little younger, a little more sparkly, a little less complicated.

In these years there is joy and there is grief: two truths wrestling to understand each other, and the human who has to embody them gracefully.

And then there’s me. Wondering why restaurants are suddenly so dark.