I Am Old Hear Me Roar!

Two months ago my eye doctor cheerfully told me that I had graduated to bifocals.  Last week, my doctor confirmed that I was in the midst of the madness known as menopause.  And this morning I hung out with an orthopedist in the hopes of getting my arthritic feet some relief.   Oh joy!

This barrage of age related realities has befuddled me.  My body is clearly forty-eight years old but the rest of me is a spry thirty-two.  There is a disconnect between my physical self and my emotional, mental and spiritual self.

For example, the other day I was in line at the liquor store and the woman in front of me was asked for id.  She was crazy excited and made a big deal about being thirty-four and getting carded.  I’m not going to lie.  I was hoping to get asked for id.  And then it happened, as I slid my wine towards the cashier she asked me, “Do you have…”  YES! YES! YES!  It’s happening, “an air miles card?”  Dammit.

This isn’t a boo-hoo rant about getting older.  Forty-eight is cool.  As my Dad says, “It’s better to be a year older than dead.”

I do what I want and say what I think.  I’m who I want to be rather than who people think I should be.  I don’t have a Teflon coating but for the most part things slid off me instead of sticking and weighing me down.  Translation: I just don’t give a shit what other people think of me.  Take me or leave me, I’m all good.

My wrinkles and sagging body parts do not make me sad.  Not because I have “earned” them but because it’s my reality.  It’s everyone’s reality.  We are all going to age and get old or die trying.  Maybe I traded cellulite, mid-life acne and far-sightedness for an oversized dose of self-confidence.  SOLD!  These orthopedic shoes are way more comfortable anyway.

I’m just so tired of worrying about how I look.  The truth is my butt is sagging, my neck is pleating and skin tags are multiplying at an exponential rate.  But I will not be consumed by trying to undo what age brings.

I may just be talking smack.  I know there will be days when my self-confidence has a brain fart and I succumb to the last forty-eight years of brain washing that says, “Do all you can to look, feel and be a certain way.”

But I’ve had a taste of what not giving a shit looks like and I want more.  So bring on all the other old people things – osteoporosis, hearing loss, glaucoma and memory loss.  I’ll be a bloody super woman of self-confidence by the time I’m sixty.

I am old woman hear me roar or mutter.  Whichever.