38 Going on 30

A meditation on how great I look (for my age).

The first time someone told me I looked great for my age I was 27, minding my business on a beach in Kauai basically naked when I was approached by a young man. Younger than me, anyway. His was a numbers game… chatting up non-locals in hopes of sparking a connection would have to be something of a long shot, especially with openers like that, but there were many of us with more arriving every day. When it happened, a mental stopwatch I hadn’t realized was running came to a screeching halt. Twenty-seven. 

I am now 39 years old, and “You look great” has been floating around a whole hell of a lot recently, and while I never look a gift horse in the mouth I also understand there to be an ellipses, a swallowed “for your age.” It’s also true that compliments about my appearance are not always qualified by my age, but neither are they ever entirely divorced from it. That’s what the Kauai beach incident of 2012 taught me: that for your age was here to stay, so might as well embraced it.

It doesn’t negate the quality of my appearance, or the beholder’s opinion, and while it shouldn’t be that big of a surprise (I mean, I’m 39 not 89) I still find it very affirming. I get that all of us grew up on sitcoms where the put-upon parents in their 40s looked not a day under 65, and so our frame of reference is probably skewed. Not to mention the absolute bullshit socioeconomic landscape in which we find ourselves. The plans have all been thrown out.

Every year of my life I have been surprised to find that this is what it is. I thought age was supposed to be linear? But no. At 20 I was wearing newly-purchased slacks from Express and lying about being 25 to get a job I wasn’t qualified for- a move I had seen play out in the 1991 cult classic, Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead. It totally worked. At 24 I was the “breadwinner” in my household and owned not one, not two, but three large dogs. At 27 I decided to leave the job I faked my way into to become a starving artist. At 35 I was a housewife without a house or a husband, just a key and a ring, neither of which I got to keep in the end. And now… Now at 39, I am finally on my way.

Which makes me 30.

When I was 30 the first time, I was full of fear and anxiety and bravado, all leftovers from the quarter life crisis that I’d experienced a few years prior. I didn’t know who I was but how could I? I hadn’t seen enough of it yet. There were questions without answers, and even more answers without questions. I knew what I wanted, but had no idea how to get it. I was scattered and somewhat chastened, but I looked great for my age. I wanted love and security, but also freedom. However, freedom had shown itself to be something I was not capable of wielding with care, and so felt very unsafe. I put it on the chopping block to be sacrificed. I wanted into the clubs and relationships and families that wouldn’t have me as a member, and I let myself wade in the murky waters of self-degradation. When an out-stretched hand was offered to me from a moral high-ground, I took it and never looked back. Until I was 37, when I looked all the way back and realized what had happened. That was the moment my first quarter life crisis ended.

In the midst of all this, I got pregnant. Two weeks before my 36th birthday, and one week after I got engaged. My boobs looked amazing in the dress I picked out for our engagement dinner, a dead giveaway. I was incensed. I felt robbed.

How could I possibly have a baby?

My life was only just starting.

And so I didn’t.

I still have the dress.

Men who move away from situations that stifle them in any capacity are at once celebrated for their rugged individualism, and sneered at for having Peter Pan Syndrome (although I suspect this is motivated by fear in women and envy in men.) But no one talks about Wendy. 

Midway through the penultimate year of my 30s, I found myself in the apartment of a boy, it was midnight and he was drunk on life and alcohol. I loved him in a way… I wasn’t sure which, and I had been hoping to find out. This is the kind of white hot confusion that only happens in your 20s, and you will stay too long and get so sick off it that you’ll never want to touch the stuff again. But I’ll try anything twice. 

I did leave, though. And I knew which way I loved him.

Wendy doesn’t want to be with Peter Pan. She doesn’t want to marry him and settle down and go to the fucking farmer’s market. She wants to be Peter Pan. She has to grow up because it’s time, but he gets to go on adventuring… flying all around… flirting with hot, bitchy mermaids. What a life. No one will ask him if he wants kids. Isn’t it obvious? He’s Peter fucking Pan. His life is only just starting. Forever. 

In the boy’s apartment at midnight a pout of red lips spoke from a porcelain doll face, “Do you want to have kids?” I squirmed. At my age, (that I look great for) if I say no too emphatically, it seems like I’m protesting too much and the regretful person asking has to decide whether this is sad. They will also have to math, and I won’t ever make someone math. Especially not at midnight in a boy’s apartment. So I told the truth. That I didn’t feel the need. I returned the question, which felt ridiculous and compulsive. The answer was 26 years old and perfect, like the porcelain doll face that spoke it. “Yes, but not for a while. I have plenty of time.” 

Here I am compelled to tell you that a test was taken when I was 38 and two months old, and a doctor told me my uterus looked great for its age. Not a day over 33. This is useless information that has never been shared, but it would have been weirder to say it at midnight in a boy’s apartment than right now on the internet so I am still up. It’s not sad, in case you were trying to decide. 

At 39 I am finding my second quarter life crisis to be a much cozier version of its predecessor. The questions posed in QLC1 have given way to answers I was in no way ready to heed back then. Freedom has been moved from the chopping block to my altar. The part of me with a taste for white hot confusion and self-degradation is being restored to sanity. I’ll never touch the stuff again.

Wendy saw that her shadow was still attached and that even the happiest thoughts couldn’t bend the laws of gravity, but that was ok because growing up was not the enemy it was made out to be. In fact the prospect of it was infinitely more exciting than forever staying the same. It was entering into a messy, creative, partnership with life itself, and that was all she ever really wanted.