there is a light in you

There's always one, but it's not really one who wonders it, just one who speaks it, and the rest nod imperceptibly. They want to know, too.

How old are you?

Except it's never like that. It's more like

How OLD are you?

They're confused, I guess. I wrote about a pirate ship and a secret clubhouse for spies and maggot sandwiches, but I look grown-up. Except I don't. I'm kind of small, and the babyface that got me kicked out of restricted movies until I was 26 now has the effect, a decade later, of people thinking sometimes that I'm 26.

There's always that question. I like it, for the answer.

Here's the thing. You think you're all fitful in your skin now but it gets worse. I mean it gets *more* fitful. You get all prickly and upset and all you want, more than anything, is to be just like everyone else. But you're not.

Some giggle and some stare blankly but two bodies in the crowd get very, very still and I know them, so I keep going.

You see different or you look different or you like different things or maybe you don't want to look like them at all but you don't like how wanting something different makes you different, and sets you apart. Nobody wants to be set apart, not when you're in grade six or grade nine or grade ten. You want to be a part. And sometimes when you don't feel safely a part, you get sad and twitchy and you feel like that's what you are, just a sad and twitchy person. But you're not.

Then the answer.

I'm 38. You want to know the very best thing about being 38?

Their faces are all the same: there can't possibly be a very best thing about being 38.

I like being different. I don't need anybody else to be like me. I walk straight. On the inside I feel all melty and okay, even when I make mistakes or trip in front of people. I'm not afraid anymore. God, it's the greatest. I'm never embarrassed. I don't get that panicky thing you get when you're worried that someone might not like you. I don't walk around all day all cramped up like a cross-threaded screw. I'm peaceful, even when I'm apart. Being apart feels kind of nice all of a sudden. You know how free that makes you, to feel like that?

I wait for one of them to crack a joke about snot or Justin Bieber because when you're in grade six, that's what you do when someone bangs on your drum. You deflect because it feels weird. But they don't. They're still staring, and not blankly.

How old are you? What's it like? 

Comments

[slouchy]

Have you seen the movie Lost in Translation? It's one of my very favorite movies, and I saw it again last night. This whole post fits so well with the film's message, and it's such an important and good one.

At 43 I am more capable of expressing my wants and needs and thoughts than I ever was.

[Misty]

I always been and wanted something different and that has always set me apart. Caused stares and made people screw their faces up in that funny way when they're confused. I've never cared. Not about that.
And I laugh when they ask how old I am and learn I have kids - even though I couldn't possibly be old enough. They decide they won't believe what I say because I'm too young, but that's ok too, because I'll show them. It never fails.
Sometimes I want to blend in because I'm tired of peole asking, of staring. I'm not very good at it though, I don't really know how and trying makes me twitchy. So I don't try very often.
I am 33, a girl and a farmer.

[charlie]

I'm forty in years. sixty in miles. twelve when I hear the word "duty" or "erect". I get asked for ID in bars, then they say, "here's you double, sir." they say "sir" like theyre addressing their father.
then I tell a dick and/or fart joke.
I have confusion about age and birthdays. there's cake though. ebb and flow, I reckon.

[brianna]

I'm 32 now, newly minted, but I feel much older than that. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the schedule I keep, by choice, is more along the lines of those who who are in retirement than those who are supposedly in the prime of their lives. Up at dawn and asleep by ten. But it probably has more to do with the fact that what I've been through over the last 16 months ages a person.

I feel comfortable in my age and my pseudo-older age, even though I actually feel more separate and more different than I have ever felt in my life. Even more so than when I had braces and glasses and was the tallest girl with the biggest feet in my 9th grade class. But again, that feeling of being separate has more to do with having a baby who died shortly after birth than anything else. Although I don't know how true those feelings of being separate really are since everyone has their own traumas. Sometimes I think feeling separate is just arrogance on my part and that having been through something traumatic makes me more part of the world than I ever was before.

Anyway, those feelings of being different don't normally consume me or make me feel somehow inadequate as a human like having really huge feet did when I was a teenager. There is some real truth in the commonly held idea that the fourth decade of life beings with it some peace about who you are. At least it has for me.

[Brittany]

I am just starting to get out of the panicked "what if they don't like me?" phase. What a royal pain in the ass, by the way. For a long while now all I've wanted is to be older--and still, that's what I want. I wish I could time-jump to my late thirties and see what it's like, if I'm any different.
But then again, at 25, I'm not really like those of the same age I know. I've been sick most of my life, and continue to struggle. I would some day kill others for their "problems". I'm not exactly "young and vital". I feel old. But I'm still 25, up there in my head, somewhere.
I am 25: it is messy, confusing, uncertain, strengthening.

[Ryan]

I'm 36. I feel like a fat slob.

[Bethany]

I'm 26. I'm divorced, and I almost have a master's degree. I have a 19-inch scar straight down my spine. I have no idea, about anything.

[sweetsalty kate]

Brianna: "But again, that feeling of being separate has more to do with having a baby who died shortly after birth than anything else. Although I don't know how true those feelings of being separate really are since everyone has their own traumas. Sometimes I think feeling separate is just arrogance on my part and that having been through something traumatic makes me more part of the world than I ever was before."

God yes.

Ryan, it's not how you feel it's how you look. And you don't look like a fat slob.

[Alison]

I'm 23. I've sat for five minutes looking at "I'm 23" *cursor cursor cursor cursor cursor cursor*.

That probably means I don't know. Maybe that's kind of the point. But I feel as though..hrm.. if somehow I was to wake up and suddenly be 10 or 15 or 19 or 21, that I'd notice straight away and try and shake it off and go back to sleep and wake up 23 again. So, that's something. 23, oddly enough, isn't 22 and certainly isn't 21. I hope that there's validity and acceptance for someone who is 23. I think there's a song about no one liking you when you're 23. I hope that's not true. Maybe I shouldn't care.

It feels kind of.. you know.. "holy shit, what do you mean that high school wasn't YESTERDAY? I was in grade ten.... SEVEN years ago? not yesterday?" but I wouldn't rewind anyway. There's a moving-towards-standing-up-straight that I feel now that I didn't last year or the year before. Childhood is gone, but I'm kind of hanging in the in-between. It's irky and not always comfortable and I have opinions on things that people say I shouldn't have opinions on because "I don't have the experience to know" but I'm convinced that people grow up different because they plan to be different and how am I ever supposed to be good and productive and honest and communicative and lovely if I'm not allowed to spend my early twenties exploring and talking about what it means to be all those things, and plan for it.

So, it's thoughtful and emotional and hard and easy, but it doesn't slow down. That's what it is. That's what it feels like.

Thanks for turning my wheels on this one.

[mamie]

35. Last week whilst hiking with my sister I was briefly tricked into thinking I was 36 as she tried to figure our her age with the help of her husband. She has a three week old newborn, her confusion is well earned. Mine? I'll attribute the slip to travel brain.

So, I like it, 35. Feels okay, I'm a little stiffer in the morning. A little rounder in the belly and thighs, a little happier than ever before. I know the shape I want our lives to take and feel less intimidated by change. The lines have sunk a little deeper next to my eyes and mouth but most of them curve up.

This is not say I feel 'figured' out. :) just kinder to my self in the figuring. And the next half of the 30s look inviting ... A move, some land, more babies not my own, yoga training and travel. It looks inviting indeed.

And god, Kate, are likely one of the only people in the world that can fnd words to make the middle littles pause and contemplate their 30s. You are quite simply amazing, friend.

And Ryan, shut up. I see a man with an amazing eye that twinkles when you are 'in' it. With a wife and children that you love so and do so well by. Never once have the offensive words 'fat slob' crossed my mind.

[Sweet|Salty's Mom]

When I was 38, you were 12...now 26 years later, we don 't need to do the math!

[palinode]

I have a strange time telling people my age. They're generally completely floored when I say I'm 40, because I look much younger. One fellow asked me I was turning 24, to my astonishment. Like you, I'm small and my face is youthful, despite the silver in my beard (seriously, how do people not see my chin full of bright white wires?) . But when I tell people how old I am, suddenly they need to recalibrate their estimation of me. I make a great 29 year old, but as bona fide adult? Maybe not so much.

On the other hand, I spent a day recently with a naturalist who took me on a tour of a park. He knew I was 40, but he frequently said things like <i>young folk like yourself</i>. So there's always someone out there older than you, someone to whom you're little more than a child.

[Ryan]

Apologies. I'm 36 and look like a package of soft batch cookies.

[Catherine]

I'm 34. Still insecure. Newly pregnant for the third time. Scared witless about it all. Hope I have a new baby just after my 35th birthday. It's all I can think about right now. *sigh.

[Erica]

I'm 107, or is that 37? I guess it's 37, but either one very young for a redwood, or a mountain.

I usually like being 37. I feel old and young at the same time, can grumble about these crazy young whippersnappers and still enjoy running through a sprinkler or chasing after Dot at the park.

[Bon]

i am 39. i love it. it feels like a precipice of acceptance. i suspect i will hate 40 only for removing me from the joy and agency of the precipice.

i want to be a batch of soft cookies, or whatever Ryan said. wait. maybe i just want to EAT a batch of soft batch cookies.

[Suebob]

I just turned 50, and the strange thing is that I have become, for the most part, invisible. Invisible! It is both freeing and maddening. I am an age where no one cares about me anymore. Oh, people I already know and love care about me, which is warm and sweet and lovely. But to other people - they literally do not see me. I could be a potted plant or a bench. Something that is, of course THERE, but of no concern or desire to them. No one wants to impress me, no one wants to connect with me. Women my age are fussy and opinionated and troublesome and not physically attractive, unless you are the rare one in a hundred who makes it past the filters. So I float through life unmoored by expectations and desires. I am me, but unmirrored, unreflected, unnoticed. It is like shouting into a valley with no echo. Strange.

[Fer]

Last week my inner-six-year-old matched wits with my actual living seven-year-old. Those are the moments we both need a Time Out.

The rare days when I fuss with my hair (while wondering why it's inexplicably thinning) and try out the styles sported by my fifteen-year-old clientele, I know I am being twelve, minus the woven-ribbon hair clips with dangling silk flowers.

When I cry from sheer frustration or exhaustion or for lack of a more meaningful response, I am brought right back to nine. When my father would ask me why I was crying and the best response I could summon was a warbling "I don't knoooooooooooooooooowwwww..."

My cynical and serious self is 24. That was when I cut my hair military-short and placed a tiny but effective chip on my shoulder.

When I rock sassy shoes and funky outfits, I am 27.

When I am worried, anxious, and giving myself a hard time, I feel thirteen, the age I had a brief romance with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

My prankster, semi-inappropriate self is nineteen, the self who pulled an all-nighter in college to stack cans outside a sleeping friend's dorm room door and then await the aluminum avalanche. This is the self that agrees to dance in the Homecoming Pep Rally.

Most of the time, I embrace my inner 32.


But I have high hopes, based on my hip, happy, and healthy mentors in their forties and beyond, that the best may be yet to come.

And I'm bringing all the other years and their alter egos into the next decade with me.

[Kaz]

I'm 35. I often forget how old I am and have to really think about it whenever someone asks. I like 35 a lot. I feel like most of my awkwardness is behind me. I panicked when I turned 30, I felt I hadn't achieved everything I wanted in life and was a bit lost. Now I feel calm about the future as though I am the one leading rather than just tagging along behind. I know me better and have more confidence in my choices. I have hope this will only continue to grow.

[thordora]

I've been rattling the age thing around in my head forever now, and writing sporatic fiction pieces about it, because it's fascinating and scary all at once. I'm 34 this year. I never saw it coming, and I don't feel that old, not inside where that 17 year old me still runs around. But at the same time, I feel my age, I feel the adult and I love it. I love the idea of growing older, of certain things only coming to you WITH age, and I sometimes wonder if we haven't lost that....the reward of age, becoming...

I dunno. All I know is that I am NOT mid thirties. It cannot be possible :p

[Not on Fire]

I am 48, but because of my late birthdays, I will be 50 next year. I have been looking to being 50. People tell me that they cannot believe that I am almost 50, maybe partly because I have young kids.

I think that the inner me is the same no matter what age I am, and yet I am different too. I know myself better and like myself better. I am happy with my age for the most part. I don't yet love my wrinkles but I am moving into acceptance about that too.

[p]

31. Astonished and somewhat tickled to be middle-aged, and I know we're all meant to avoid that term until we're 55 or so, but I for one am not expecting to live until I'm 110. So I am entering my middle 30, if I'm lucky to have a nice balanced triptych of virgin, mother, crone. Feeling much more grounded and happy than I used to, and finally appreciate that this is all ephemera and so I am much better at mindfulness now. A bit wistful for my young legs (which I never appreciated) and my young skin (which I never appreciated) but my middle-aged legs are serviceable and my middle-aged skin is just silly, all these wrinkles popping up.

The biggest shock is the lack of big wide horizon. I can't be anything I want to be anymore, not feasibly. I will never be a naturopath or a park ranger. I am pretty much locked in, career-wise, to a crumbling industry, and I feel too old already to start over.

[Gal]

I'm 40. I'm improving with each day. Getting stronger in my body, firmer, more fit. Sexier. I bought skinny jeans-jeggins the other day. Not sure what the rules are about wearing skinny jeans when you're 40, especially when they're the first pegged pants of any kind I've owned since 8th grade. But I got the thumbs up from my husband. And they feel good. My body feels good. I have more of an edge at 40 than I did before, but that's more from life experience than age, I think. I like the maturity that comes with 40. I've always thought women in their 40s and 50s are the most beautiful... Beautiful because they know each themselves. They know the power of their bodies and spirits in a way that women in their 20s don't, not quite yet. It's surprisingly good to be here, at 40.

[Kelsi]

I'm 41. I feel 100 times better than I did at 31 and 1000 times better than I did at 21. I'm not quite where I want to be yet but now I know how to get there and I won't let anything stop me.
That's a big difference for me. I used to stop myself before anyone else could. Not anymore.

[Cheryl S.]

I'm 40. While I don't love the number, I love the being. Like you, I'm not embarrassed anymore. I can dance in the middle of the mall with my 6 year old, and when she says "Mamma, people are looking!" I can just say "So?" I'm more comfortable in my skin now than I've ever been. When I was 20 and had a rockin' body, I was ashamed of one little lump or bump. Now, I don't look bad, but I sure don't look 20. But, you don't like what you see? Don't let the door hit ya as you go. I seem to be getting younger as I get older. My hubby (unfortunately) still gives a damn what people think, so I embarrass him sometimes! (I wonder if this is just something women go through?)

[Becky]

I'm 40...and I don't feel better stronger sexier thinkier smarter. I don't feel any of it. I feel lost. 40 has not been the great,' yeah man now I'm so much more moreness'. No, I feel lost and I'm looking for the way...and 40 sucks.

[Quadelle]

I'm 39 for a couple more weeks. I've been a tad preoccupied about turning 40. The number, for some unknown reason, conjures up for me an image of a portly woman who drives a family station wagon and has short fluffy hair - descriptions to which I've never particularly aspired.

But 40 is not looking likely to be that way at all. In the last six months I've gone through two paradigm-shifting realisations. The first was incredibly sobering. The second unbelievably freeing. The second is what gives me hope and even a sense of excitement as my birthday looms. I have no idea what the future holds, but I feel better equipped to face it, whatever it may be.

And, yes, you're so right about the wonderful freedoms that come in your 30's. I loved my 30's for precisely those reasons.

[rebeccaeee]

39. Somewhere between about 35 and now, I started feeling slower, heavier, like one of the gazelles lagging behind the pack. Still a willful, wild animal but doomed to be caught by the cheetah sometime soon. I don't understand this at all because inside me there is a petulant 5 year old, a somewhat bitchy 25 year old and, oh yeah, that slow gazelle. A friend once told me she envied my ability to feel completely at home in my own skin which has been surprisingly true....until now. 39 is perplexing. Maybe its the sleep deprivation of twomall children or the stress of two jobs or the grey hair. All I know is that being 39 beats the allternative.

[Betsy]

30. And I don't know if it's my age or having a 5-month-old squishy boy as my poolside accessory, but either way, I have such simple fun just swimming and doing tricks off the diving board, not caring what guy is watching and thinks I'm hot (or not). Except Dust, who does way better tricks than I do.

Kate, you look 28. It's plain weird how ageless you are. And Ryan, you need to post a picture of you in a Speedo and prove it.

[Tania]

Forty. And relieved. Forty is a bit introspective and a bit devil may care.

[Natalie]

I am 36 in years and on my birth certificate, but forever 24, on most days.

It's funny that I finally feel confident in most of my choices and in am coming to grips with who I am as a person and what I want and need out of life....but I truly expected that headspace and those needs/wants to be so much different at 36. I thought that being grown-up would feel differently....and that I'd feel somehow "put together" or complete....but It feels the same, on most days, as it did on 24...the only difference is that I just care less or, I guess, I care MORE about me.....maybe that's the best part of growing up....

I am 36 in years....and, on most days, getting better all the time.

[Natalie]

woa....this 36 year old needs to re-read her pre-coffee comments for grammatical/spelling errors....clearly!

mea culpa and kisses

[Cheney]

I just read that over, and over and over again. I have been struggling with turning 29 (I KNOW) and this made me feel... peaceful about the whole thing. Because I want to get there, where you are. Desperately. I can't wait to get there. Thank you so much.

[jenna]

i just turned 26 and i'm terrified. i have no idea what i'm doing. i've always been a planner but the life plans i made fell apart this past spring and right now i am just living day-to-day, picking up the pieces. i am trying to enjoy it and live in the moment, but there are times when my fear of the future feels like an enormous wave about to crash over my head. i am hoping that 27 comes very, very slowly.

[meremortal]

34 feels too old to be young and too young to be old.
in the middle.
34 still answers to fertility and ovarian tugs. in fact, it answers to little else. except chocolate
34 says fuck all to eating healthy and exercise.
34 is about surviving.
34 no longer defies gravity: body parts sag and sink and wrinkle and fold.
34 ponders mortality. all.the.time.
34 means a lifetime is ahead of you.

[Anngeedee]

I have 5 more days of being 33. 33 feels to me like my favorite pair of jeans. Not stiff, but comfortable. Worn a little at the edges but in ways that add character and coolness. 33 is boyfriend cut and relaxed fit and soft denim. 33 is appropriate for all occassions and it feels good on me. Maybe 34 will too.

[Jenn]

I am on the cusp of 40...maybe I look it in certain light, maybe concealer helps a bit. I still am waiting to feel at full peace in this body, the wrinkles and sag sometimes get the better of me.

I recall a comedienne's response to a "did she, didn't she have a boob job" jab. She responded that they were where they belonged, under her armpits. I was in Value Village on Senior's Discount Day last week and the clerk asked, " How are you?" I said, "Young". I guess humour needs a receptive audience to land--that young lad with dreads and ear plugs just blankly blinked at me. I guess I am old, or not funny or sigh, both. At least my boobs are where they belong.
I am anticipating my 40's will be fertile new ground for my untappedness...I am a teacher so I am allowed to make up new words.

[Betsy]

I have trouble remembering lately if I'm 45 or 46. This could be because I'm the baby of my family. Once a baby, always a baby.

[amanda]

those lucky kids, to get to hear that message from you. so, so important. i'm glad they actually heard you.

I'm 37. Sometimes that feels shocking. What is even more shocking is that I am kind of - sort of - no, really - looking forward to 40.

[Titanium]

I'm 34, for a moment. A split-second, really. It's taken every single one of my years to build and deconstruct the person who looks back at me in the mirror. I like her okay, most days, this mirror-girl.

[Jen]

I am 40. When I was 12, I felt like I was 60-shouldering all my family problems and the problems of the world-the starving in Africa and the parents of the Downs Syndrome baby down the street.
Today I am more youthful than 28 (gulp) years ago. I don't give a shitake about how I look (physically) to the rest of the world. I feel light and vibrant. Frankly I am bored to death with the rantings of women and how they are asked for ID when they are 35. This evening my coworkers and I went out for Friday beer and this lady walked into the bar-she must've been 70 years old and every fiber in her body was intent on making herself look 35 and I thought what a waste of her energy-her life for crying out loud-she's not kidding anyone-she looks 70.
I don't get it. Age is just age. You are born, you live, you die

[Sara]

I'm 27. The age I feel has never fit the age I am. Life has taught me to tell assholes to fuck off and to be comfortable in my own skin because it's the only skin I'm ever going to have, might as well. I share a near-identical sense of humor with my 18 y/o nephew. I feel blessed and successful and happy and youthful and old. I don't think any of that will change when I'm 40/50/60. At least I hope it doesn't. Last week, I was bitching to myself about the de-elasticized skin two pregnancies gave me. And then I thought back to how mean I was to myself at 16 for the nonexistent "problem areas". I realized that if 16 y/o me could have seen a picture of me now, she wouldn't have thought me now was half bad. SUCK IT, insecurities.

[The Lamb]

I'm 31 and it certainly feels better than 21 or 26. I'm more at peace with myself and my life, more positive, confident and hopeful about the future. Except the blue veins on my legs, being in your 30s seems great!

[anja]

i`m 40. in an hour, i will be 41. it`s very strange to me that i am in fact NOT 26 anymore. it`s not that i would really like to be 26 again, because i wouldn`t. but i do not feel like 40. or 41. or maybe i just don`t know how you are supposed to feel?i know now what i love and what i don`t love. i know WHo i love and who i don`t love. in an hour i will be 41. what a strange thought.

[angelica]

when I was a kid I looked older, always looked older, which made my 3 years older sister crazy. she always threatened, "one day, when we are old, you will look old and I will look young" but I somehow got stuck, went from looking older than my age to looking younger than my age....pretty perfect really no?

[Tammy]

Love this post. I just received the Dread Crew in the mail for my boys. Such a beautiful book.

[Denise]

48 right now... after midnight will be 49! Too close to the big 5-Oh! My son wants me to go to the Seniors Centre and get a membership next year. I said they would not appreciate me bringing a 13 yr old and a 7 yr old to their monthly potluck dinners! Just want to hang around long enough to raise these two children of mine... And grandma is worried about making a nice birthday lunch and a cake ... I'm more concerned with other more important matters! It's no fun growing old for sure...

[magpie]

i'm a little bit 26, and a little bit 37 (lucy jordan), and actually 50, and getting better every single day. and when i was younger, i was always the youngest, always, and now? i'm just me, except i think i'm always the oldest because who else has a 7yo when they're 50?

[alexandra]

I wish we didn't keep track of age. We are how we feel. There is a point, for women, where we seem to disappear, and not so much for men.

But for women, yes...we start to be seen as silly old women.

So sad. We dont' feel that way inside.

[Dana]

Wow, this post made me think and laugh and cry a little all at the same time. I am 35 according my piece of paper in my safe. I still remember being 25 desperately hoping no one on the kindergarten playground would ask me how old I was because then they would know. I got pregnant in my first year of college married that long haired hippie boy and didn't finish what I started so eagerly at 18. And then I was 26 and lost our second baby and then 27 and held our living breathing 2nd child. Then went back to finish what I started which took another 6 years another lost baby another breathing little boy and infertility treatments and a dangerous pregnancy that nearly went south at the last moment but resulted in beautiful c-section scar and baby girl and piece of paper that cost more than our first house within 4 days of each other. And then just as all the relief of being done getting by children, my piece of fancy paper on the wall a health scare that resulted in a surgery where I lost my womb, the volume of the blood in my body twice over and to this day makes my ob/gyn blanch when I walk into the office to see him. The one time a woman had said to him "this is going to go so wrong" the day he wheeled me in for surgery and resulted in him ordering up extra life saving blood based on a feeling and his tears waking me in ICU the next day just because I made it. I will drop my oldest boy off in 4 days for his sophomore year is high school, now taller than I by 4 inches. I will hold the hand of my baby as I take her to preschool for the first day and cry in the van again. And it feels perfect. I love watching my son preparing with all his might to go to the Air Force Academy and revel in how amazing it felt to be standing on the edge about to jump, the squiggles racing through my stomach, feeling strong enough to take on the world. The nausea inducing fall wondering "oh my god did I jump far enough". And the thrill of the cold water when I landed. The water feels as amazing to float in as it looked from way up there and I as happy here as I was up there. And I can't wait to see where the current takes me down this river, I know it will be an amazing trip and an incredible end/beginning when I spill out into the ocean again one day.