One day, I'm not sure which, probably in 2007, my face started to fall off.
I'd got by until 40 looking younger than my years. Cynics would say it's because I lived alone until I was 39. Whatever. At 40 the lines started to show. They were nothing serious, in fact they were definitely laughter lines. Both my parents are very youthful and I foolishly believed I'd inherited the good genes.
At 43 I became the mother of a 13 month old baby. Just like that. At 3pm, November 13th 2006, I wasn't a mother. At 3.01 I was.
The last three years have been a joy and I love my sweet girl more than life but I'm exhausted. And that's what I see when I look in the mirror. Exhaustion. One day, I managed to pull myself from the bed in which I'd been attempting to sleep for the previous 12 months or so and I left my face on the pillow. I've tried sticking it back on, in a Travolta/Cage stylee, but to no avail. I blame my neck, what's left of it. No longer able to hold itself up, it just sits crumpled, prevented from sliding to the floor only by my shoulders. And it's damn well dragged my face down with it. They're both just too bloody tired to sit up straight and look perky.
Oh how I've laughed.
Not.
For one thing, it doesn't look good when my turkey neck jiggles.
I hate the physical ageing process. Hate it. On the inside, on a good day (and they're mostly good days) I feel better than I ever have. I feel more powerful and empathetic than I ever did as a younger woman. I love the experience and perspective I have now and you'd have to prise them out of my cold dead hand before I'd give them up but the wrinkles and the sagging...no no no no no no no.
This is a serious issue for me but it's hard to write about without feeling shallow or silly or both. I've never been a vain woman. My appearance has always been something to have fun with rather than to celebrate or preen. But now that my face is ageing it is destroying my confidence in other things. It makes me feel as if I no longer fit; as if I'm no longer good/attractive/young enough to be out in the world doing 'new things', starting over, building.
And yes, I am aware that this is INSANE. Why would those three qualities belong together? And yet...I believe it. I don't need to take apart the effects of our society's obsession with youth or the media's evil air-brushing ways - we know that stuff and cling to it like a drowning man clings to a deflating balloon (with my features on it). It doesn't seem to matter that I know how fake and crappy botox-ed, lifted and/or filled faces look, and how Most Women don't look like that. I still want to cry when I look in the mirror or at photographs of myself.
And it's this near obsession, this complex, that is one of the major blocks to me moving on to the next stage of my life. A stage that I think will probably be the best yet - the first 6 years of my 40s have, after all, been the best of my entire life - but that, on some level, I think I must fear as a slippery slope into obsolescence. All the great ideas I have...all the creative projects I start and never pursue...all the dreams I know I can reach...I don't follow through publicly on any of them because at some point someone is going to look at me and think,"God she's way too old for that."
Did I mention, INSANE?
Because the thing is, when I do the 'What if it was X telling you she was going to do this or that she was feeling this way...?' test, I do the full 180 turn. Nothing I feel about myself is reflected in how I think about other people.
But they don't have my face.
- I inherited the skin of my Celtic/Gaelic forefathers - designed for damp and cool environments, incapable of tanning, shrivels like Spongebob out of water.
- I smoked from 17 to 35. Don't even say it.
- I have a very sweet tooth and it transpires that sugar is the wrinkle's friend.
- I've spent the last 12 years working and relaxing in front of a computer screen.
- I love the outdoors.
- I'm light-sensitive and squint a lot even in average daylight.
- I have a daughter who only just started to sleep at night. She's four.
Y'know that show, Ten Years Younger? They put some poor, hapless woman in a shopping centre, under fluorescent lighting, in her oldest clothes, dirty hair and no make-up, then ask the general public to guess how old she is. If that was me...Ten Years Older. They'd all think I was in my late 50s.
I have three good friends who are either in their 50s or about to be. One, she knows who she is, got carded a couple of months ago. Enough said. Another, I've known since I was born (I made her an aunt at 3.5) and when she and I are together there is no time or age or stuff like that. Another has one of those delicately pretty faces that is so enchanting you just stare at her.
Meanwhile at work I am, bar one, the oldest person working for the organisation in one of the most junior positions. When I applied for the job I came in on - an entry level position but I was desperate to get in - I was 39. Six months from 40. I didn't put my D.O.B. on my application and I got an interview, followed by the job. I was interviewed by my future boss, then just 30, and the girl I'd be working under. She was 22. The Directors were all in their mid-30s. For years it was a standing joke that no one knew how old I was and then when word got out there was a respectful silence. Ha! But the culture here is ageless and no one cared one way or the other. Except me. I did, and do, feel old here. And on a bad day, I look it.
The awesome women I've met here in the UK, the beautiful BBCers...all at least 10 years younger than me and rocking it. It makes me feel a bit lame and yet internally, I kick ass.
Other women my age, blogging, like-minded, are amazing to me. It wouldn't even occur to me to consider them anything other than vital and full of potential and future and time and energy and relevance. Holy crap, they're only in their 40s/50s! Charlie reaches a big birthday next year and nothing can convince me that he isn't about to have the best fresh start ever - full of the things I listed above with added knowledge, experience and determination. I know that to be true. Know it. But to me they don't look older. I don't look at them and gasp at how much time has passed the way I do when I catch sight of myself in a window. It's not the number, dude...it's the skin.
And there's the thing. If I could just reprogramme myself to say,"I'm older now" and, to quote the youthful but botox-ed Simon Cowell,"own it", maybe I could say,"Well you're a tired 46 but that's okay." But when I'm still expecting my younger, smoother face...yikes. It's like 50 First Dates with myself. You think I'd learn.
I've rambled on and on about this but my point is that this is a huge block for me. It makes me sad, it weighs me down, it makes me want to hide and for once in my affirming, visualising, straight-talking life I have no idea how to fix it. And I am ashamed to feel this way and so the urge to hide gets stronger. It doesn't match my life values or my belief in women. It is ridiculous and petty and belongs to a world I don't want to be part of. And yet, it hurts.
I fully intend to be around at least another 35 years and my face is going to get a whole lot more crepe-y than it is now. So am I just going to take to a darkened corner rather than look people in the eye and see my reflection?
This is a huge part of my Real & True for now. I hope the extra sensitivity I'm feeling right now and the urge to admit to it are the first stages of healing, or I'm in deep trouble.
I'm not writing this for comforting comments. I know you're supportive or I wouldn't be writing this. I don't even really want to talk about it in conversation. If you've read this far, thank you.
This is part of my story.
