On aging

Aging has been on my mind a lot lately.

Not in any particularly deep, existential, confrontation-of-my-mortality, what’s my purpose and legacy and what might I want to do with the rest of my life sort of a way, but in a much more superficial, vainer, do I look / act / appear old sort of a way.

It’s not been precipitated by any one thing. But there is a big birthday on the impending horizon. And although I’m sure the fine lines are becoming less fine with every passing tantrum from the children, I’ve not (so far) discovered any grey hairs. Yet there is a nagging knowledge that while I’m not old, I definitely can no longer be described as “young”.

And both creepingly and all at once, I’ve reached a point in my career where a lot of people in my teams suddenly seem a lot younger than I am (as we know, for good or ill, proximity always invites comparison). They have a different level of experience to mine, of course - but they also have bigger differences, of outlook and style and ways of being, and it’s faintly jarring to my Geriatric Millennial tendencies.

Then there’s the fact that in many ways, I seem to be less visible in public than I used to be. There’s much less irrelevant flirting, meeting of eyes, interaction with strangers than there once was. Maybe post-Covid society has changed and that’s something we don’t do any more. Maybe we’re just more insular, insulated, but I’m not convinced that it’s changing social mores so much the fact that I’m a woman approaching an age and that just makes me less noticeable. (I should say here - I didn’t make a habit of flirting with strangers, but knowing the option was open to me felt comforting somehow. (For “comforting”, I suspect “flattering” is more honest.))

And this faint preoccupation with being a certain age is manifesting in a low key rebellion. I’m taking an interest in clothes in a way that has never occurred to me before, through a lens of not wanting to look like I’m stuck in 2015. I’m spending more time than is probably healthy thinking about whether my eyeliner is inappropriately heavy for someone whose eyelids are starting to show the signs of parenting small children though years of interrupted sleep. Additional piercings and brand new tattoos tempt me every time I walk past the parlour on our local high street. And while I’ll never get over my love affair with the music I listened to in those formative years at university, more often than not, (the few child free) car journeys come with an angsty midlife female soundtrack as I pretend that maybe that could have been me, in another life (Wet Leg, anyone?).

It’s certainly nowhere near crisis levels. It’s not even a panic. But there’s definitely a mid-life moment happening. And given that funds aren’t available to buy the traditional Porsche, I feel ill-equipped to know quite what, if anything, to do about it.