One of my very favorite things that I wrote was exactly two years ago today, on my birthday. It was a BIG birthday for me and yet I had no thoughts, feelings, emotions, anticipation, or anxiety about said birthday. I just let it come.
And it came in such a delightful way. I spent the day with my then three year old enjoying a Five Guys cheeseburger and taking him (wink, wink) to see Tangled.
Oh, I still get chills when I watch that movie.
But today is different than that day. It’s not better or worse. It’s just different.
I’m older (well, duh) and sure enough, I’m aging. But that’s only on the outside. Inside, I’m still the same old me. So I wanted to capture that. And instead, this is what I ended up with.
Every photo echoed some criticism:
“You have zombie eyes in that one.”
“Do the glasses and black turtleneck make me look too much like I’m trying to be a poet?”
“Whoops, there’s my double chin again.”
“Oh hey, nice jowls. Let’s try the other side.”
“Seriously? Is my face breaking out at 42?”
And whomp, there it is. My new age. I’m 42.
I have this problem where I feel compelled to be horribly honest about everything. If you told me that you thought I was 33, I would never simply say thank you. I’d have to confess my real age otherwise I’d feel like I was deceiving you.
Clearly, I’d never make it in Hollywood.
And yes, I still have some of that self-loathing going on.
(P.S. I haven’t forgotten about our project to Embrace the Imperfection. I just decided to wait until after the holidays when I think it’s easier to find time to love ourselves.)
It’s not just the change in physical appearance either. It’s the realization (and yes, I tend to have big dramatic realizations like this) that my generation has kind of already peaked. We’re still here conquering the world and stuff, but we’re grooming the next generation. The ones with smooth skin and small bellies who are just starting to realize their promise.
But then I had one more realization.
When I was one of those smooth-skinned, small-bellied girls dreaming of what life would bring me, I fell in love with a series of books by Douglas Adams that started with The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. And recently I remember an interesting tidbit from one of the books. So I went to my favorite fact-checking site, Wikipedia, to refresh my memory and sure enough…
In the first novel and radio series, a group of hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings demand to learn the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything from the supercomputer, Deep Thought, specially built for this purpose.
It takes Deep Thought 7½ million years to compute and check the answer, which turns out to be…
Maybe it’s not such a bad age after all.
10 comments
42 is the new 30. 🙂
Honestly, I can’t wait to turn 42 so that I can make the same reference to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
PS – if you like Douglas Adams, you should check out Terry Pratchett. He’s the Douglas Adams of the fantasy world.
Happy birthday! And girl, you DO look 33!
Happy birthday beautiful! You are all kinds of awesome.
Happy Birthday, Fadra. You don’t see it but I do: you look wonderful.
Happy Birthday!!! You look beautiful!! 🙂
Yep. 42 is perfect. So is 53. And all the ages in between and before and after. I wish I hadn’t wasted so many years looking at my flaws. I have so many more now that I’m an old old woman, but I choose to ignore them. Happy Birthday, Fadra.
Watchout. 42 is when I started my bone fide midlife crisis. Now at 49 I survived that and am really having to deal with what age is doing to my looks and my parents. 42 is really very young still. Enjoy it. Happy Birthday.
omg Fadra…you look A LOT like me. Or I look a lot like YOU. Especially, the top three. LOL I just saw a segment on the Today Show this week about dopplegangers…I dunno…pretty weird…;) Anyway…glad I found your blog. Love it!
PS…Happy Birthday! I guess we weren’t separated at birth after all…I’m older than you. 😉
Happy birthday to you. And … totally not a lie. I was going to give you a hard time and say, “Wow, you’re 42 already!” based on the big birthday thing. Figuring that there was no way you were 40. MAYBE 35 two years ago, but much more likely 30. So take that and do with it what you will.
And the self yuck photos? You should see mine. I have to send in a family photo to Little Miss’s classroom and canNOT find one I will allow to go in. Because I’m positive they’re making Christmas ornaments and I do not want that hanging on the tree. Forever. xoxo