The Big Picture

The other day, I found some pics of me from high school and a pic of me at the 8th grade dance. I was cute but didn't know it. As excited as I was to share these pics, I doubled down on the promise I made myself years ago: I'm not going to be that old chick that keeps pics at the ready of herself when she was young. Have you seen people's faces when they are cornered by women like this? It's like they want to say, Sure, you were cute then, but look at you now sis! It's pretty embarrassing for the lady shoving her phone in everyone's face to see a 20 year old picture. I knew a picture shover once. It was very uncomfortable because she didn't look like young her at. all. 

"I'm going to show my old pics whenever the opportunity presents itself, I don't care!" Risky exclaimed. "In college, I was in great shape!"

I wasn't, but I didn't look as sad. In current pictures, I feel like I look grumpy and annoyed which makes since because I am! If I had any dignity I'd just stop smiling all together and be honest in a photo or two. We all know I won't do that. 

For now, I think the solution is to avoid pictures altogether. I used to love taking them. Now I need a three month notice just to hide in the back of a pic and frown. Although I won't do it, I see why people rather show off a pic of themselves at 17. 

Trauma Drama

I honestly didn't think it was possible for me to become more reflective and emotional than I already am, but apparently I can. I find that when I think about my childhood or even my young adult years, I end up in tears. I just heard a song that was popular when I was in like the 5th grade, and started weeping. 

Millennials like to throw the word "trauma" at everything. Something traumatic must have happened when I was a kid that I haven't addressed. Now, I get triggered and have these big reactions. I mean, maybe, but I don't think so. I didn't have a lot growing up but I grew up in an area where no one did. I got a bike in elementary school. I was a Girl Scout. I spent a lot of time with my beloved grandma. As far a childhoods go, there have definitely been worse. 

If I had to guess, I think the bigger issue is the passage of time. My being a tween is so vivid in my mind, yet, in present time, I find myself looking down the barrel of being elderly and admittedly, I'm unprepared and scared. I will never be younger than I am this second, and I'm already 300-years-old! I believe that living in a fashion where you marinate on regrets is a recipe for disaster; a recipe for failure. But boy, do I have some. Again tears. 

Apparently, looking back at the past causes me some sort of something, but it's also difficult to be present, especially when things aren't going my way. A part of me wants to wade in a time where old opportunities are still available, but that's impossible. 

I guess the solution is to just to keep living; to keep pushing until I find a space I'm at least sort of cozy in. Until then, que the tears. 

Brow

I have a gray hair in my right eyebrow, so I fully expect to wake up tomorrow 200 years old and wearing a diaper. 

This gray hair has lived rent-free in my head for days. I want to pluck it out, but all I keep thinking of is how my grandma told me that if I shave the hair off my arms, it will grow back thicker and darker. If this is true, which it must be because my grandma said it, then if I pluck my gray brow hair, I will wake up with fully gray brows and even a head full of gray hair. 

I am shocked at how vain I have become in middle age, and I have spoken to you about this before. I guess it is easy to sit on your youthful skin high horse when the reality of becoming a dehydrated raisin is so far away. My friends look so good! What if I meet up with them for homecoming or something, and people confuse me for their great-grandmother? Can you imagine a more heartbreaking situation, you know, outside of famine, abuse, and poverty?

I was on social media today and saw a picture of Charles Christmas. He has gray in his beard, and he looks so sexy. I have one gray hair in my eyebrow, and I look like Mother Earth. 

I need to allow my anxiety to settle about this before I mess around and do something nutty like shave my whole eyebrow off. At least if I have a bald brow, that may take attention away from the small frown line that I think I have coming in. 

Aunty and the Bras

My aunt recently had a minor breast surgery and, as part of her recovery plan, she had to buy these granny bras that clasp in the front. Three days into her recovery she says, "I like these bras! I need to get some more of these!"

I frowned. You gotta see these bras. They only come in two colors: About To Die White and Elderly Tan.

"No you don't! These bras are too old for you!" I cried. "They are for 90-year-old grannies with Arthritis who can't reach their back bra clasps!"

"But they are sooooo cozy!" she said, doing a little spin. 

These bras are as unsexy as they come. They are perfect for the old lady who has confidently given up any type of cuteness for functionality. My aunt is only 60. Today's 60-year-old women are going on cruises, learning line dances, and dating guys half their age, not embracing the bereavement bra. 

Ladies: have you noticed that your commitment to comfort unintentionally correlates to the rate in which your sexy is slipping? I noticed the slip for me in my mid-30s. I didn't feel as pressed to paint my nails or put on lipstick when I went out. What for? By the time Covid had chewed me up and spit me out, I was as concerned with being cute as I was with learning to fly. 

No woman wants to be viewed as ancient and unbangable, but if that's coming down the pipes anyway, why not welcome it in bloomer panties, oversized night shirts, house shoes, hair rollers, and no-bang bras? Ideally, as a woman, you want to hold on to your hot for as long as possible, but if it can't be done, what are you gonna do?🤷 I know what I'm going to eventually do: lounge in my bonnet while I admire my unpainted nails. 

Hands

There is a lot to worry about in the world today.  Politics. Climate change. Food scarcity. And as a woke person, I try to stay abreast and worried about everything. However, I find that lately, I am most worried most about my hands. I fear that they are prematurely aging. 

When I was a kid, I used to watch infomercials like they were actual TV shows, especially ones where old White women talked about mail order beauty treatments. And I remember one lady talking about how important it is to make sure that your hands remain youthful. According to her, you could look like The Crypt Keeper, but if your hands were wrinkle-free, people would assume you were 22. I recall looking at my own plump, juicy 2nd grade hands that still had some baby pudge too them, wondering how ones hands get old. Easily apparently. 

I already have man hands, so I'm not excited about having old man hands, but this is all my fault. In college, my roommate and I used to clean our shower with this really strong cleaner. It was the only thing that would get our dirty foot prints from walking in flip flops around New Orleans out of the shower floor. One day, I recall looking at my hands after a cleaning with a raised eyebrow. My hands looked about two years older. Now I'm 41, scared I'm going to wake up with granny hands. 

If that is my future, it is what it is. I'm scared to use any hand products out of fear they will make things worse. This could be a great opportunity to consider some chic glove options. 

Youth pt. 2

It feels like me and the women in my life turned 39, the universe was alerted, and she sent us an array of crap. The whole thing has me thinking about the meaning of youth. 

As you know, 39 brought me endometrial polyps I had to have plucked out. That was emotional and incredibly stressful for a woman whose anxiety is already so naturally high that I could shoot to the moon on it. A college friend told me that she has already had her mammogram, something that should be set for next year, because our good friend's wife was diagnosed with breast cancer at 39. 

For some of my other girlfriends, the race to have a baby has never been so real, especially for my uncoupled friends that have to weigh waiting for a man with getting a donor. Today, my 39-year-old doctor friend died in hospice care from a disease she wasn't even old enough to get screened for! 

Is the universe trying to tell me and my soon-to-be middle-aged friends to cherish life and your health because you never know what trick life is going to pull out of its hat? Okay! Message received. Now can you please keep all my girls well and alive?

It doesn't work like that. 

When I was a kid, I'd hear my grandma on the phone giving and receiving updates on sick friends and friends who had passed. The whole thing would go over my head, now it's at my feet. For lack of a better word, it's scary. 

Is this to be life from now on? Scared for my wellbeing and that of those I love? I guess this is yet another disgusting part of adulting. My grandma would tell me to pray. I think I will. 

Youth

When you are young, people will tell you, "Do it while you are young." " Enjoy it while you're young". And the people who really know what they are talking about will tell you, "You are only young once" because that is, truly, the long and short of it. But no one will tell you that you are thinking all wrong, as if your youth has an expiration date. 21 you are young. 41 you are not.

Every now and then someone you view as truly ancient will tell you that you are only as young as you feel. Okay. But you are also only as young as you are, and all of these things have to coexist in you as truth as you move and love and do what you do. I am learning what I find it hard to articulate to others: youth is not something you have but more like a shadow that moves with you. And just like a man that don't want you no more, she will begin to spiritually withdraw until the coast is clear to jump ship completely. And one day you wake up honey and you are you, minus that special something that excused you, that ran your operations system, that set your goal calendar. You are now a new you that you may or may not welcome, and no one, not even women, prepares women for this. 

One day, you are expected to just take out your First Aid kit and begin to treat the wounds youth left behind and begin to transition to the mature you, the senior you, that respects money, takes vitamins, and gives a sh%t! And don't be that old person who is haunted by youth traumas like financial stuff and love ailments. Life has time for you like it has time for itself, and you go from a work in progress to a relic that hurts people's eyes. No one wants to see you until there is something to see. And to think, just 20 years ago, you were dancing on a table someplace. You will remember these times until you die with pristine precision, which is both beautiful and cruel. What we are talking about here is the equivalent of catching a firefly in your hands. The bulb is flickering. The end.