I Seemed to Have Lost Something...My Youth

I just celebrated a landmark birthday. With its arrival and passing, I am feeling my own mortality a little like an itchy new wool sweater that fits too tightly. Frankly, it is suffocating me. I know it belongs to me because my name is written across the tag. Perhaps the squeeze that mortality and time are putting on me is exacerbated by the fact that I have not yet met many of the goals I set for myself in my younger days such as accepting the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay or winning the Colorado lottery. Okay, I know I have set my sights pretty high, but it’s good to have soaring expectations. Right?

Then there are the small things that seem to make my situation worse: the wrinkles forming around the edges of my eyes, the intensified color of gray that has chosen to take up residence in my hair, and the fact that I have to hold small print at a certain distance from my eyes in order to read it. And for some reason, hearing the word mam and realizing it is addressed to me makes my fists tighten in agony.

Now I have never held any delusion of Dorian-Gray-esque immortality, but I suddenly find myself overcome with panic in knowing that—statistically—my life is half over. I also have never been one for regrets, but now find myself (on occasion) wondering what if? now that my youth is behind me. I seemed to have whittled away my younger years without appreciation for them, always thinking that they were endless, that being a middle-aged woman was something that would happen someday. I feel a sense of searching around myself for those earlier years like money dropped around a street grate.

Despite all of my agonizing over chronology, there is nothing I can do to change it. I can’t hop into a DeLorean and head back in time (see, I am already aging myself with outdated references). Instead, I need to come to terms with where I am. My motto of late has been appreciate the moment. I need to put this into practice. Of course, I will be doing it with a box of Loreal and industrial-strength eye cream. Hopefully, my hearing aids will be in top-notch condition when they call my name at the 130th Annual Academy Awards.