Act Your Age!

No. I don’t want to!

Ok, now I sound four.

Seriously, though, I am identifying as 28 this year so…

What exactly is a 55 year old woman supposed to act like?

…

Right? Me either. I got nothing either.

How, exactly, does one act one’s age?

And, perhaps a better question would be, why the fuck would you want to?

I am in acceptance that I am on the backside of life. It is all downhill, but I don’t have to hurry up to get there. I do not want to plod and stumble into old age and death. I want to come sliding in like the game is tied at the bottom of the 9th, bases are loaded in the final game of the World Series…with my hair on fire.

None of us get to know how much time we have to live. It seems we all develop coping skills to ease the crushing pain of our existence: that we are all going to die and none of knows exactly when that will be. So we all handle it differently.

Some of us grow old before our time.

Some of us are overly (in my opinion) amassing great fortunes that we can’t take with us and work until we are dead and never get to spend it.

Some of us are behaving as if our skin, our hair, our bodies and minds are impervious to the passage of time…

Some of us mature and somehow in that maturity we fail to live. Like maturing is all we know how to do.

Some of us never grow up at all and live each moment as it comes knowing in every single breath the next moment is not promised.

Why such a disparate ways of being?

Why do some of us feel compelled to “act our age” and other simply do not?

Hard question.

And I have not a fucking clue for everyone else. You will have to write your own blog about that. But me, me, I can tell you exactly why I hope I never act my age…I do not believe that a number on a cake every year is an apt descriptor of my soul and being. I have always been young. That is just how I show up in this life. I have almost boundless energy and zeal for living and life. It just seems to grow back overnight.

I have a host of friends that vary in age. I am close with people who are much older than me and much younger. And then I have that inner sanctum of women in their 50s that are similarly wondering how the fuck we got this old while still feeling and desiring a life that hasn’t materialize yet.

I love this life. I love my inner life in particular. It is amazing. It is wonderful. It has really good people and a very interesting plot line. It has been full of plot twists and comebacks and a great deal of fun, albeit some of that fun was pretty dysFUNctional. I have lived. I have taken chances. I have done the things that scare me. I have cared more about experience and freedom and grabbing that mother fucking brass ring than I have being safe, secure and well thought of.

I will not go quietly into whatever good night waits for me. I want to live. I want to drink it all in, in the copious amounts any good alcoholic inbibes. I want to push the envelope. I want to buy the shoes, take the trip and do the deal until I just can’t anymore. I want to live the kind of life that some really young person will come to find fascinating and want to come talk to me about it as I sit on the front porch of my log cabin on 40 acres because they are doing research or writing a book or whatever. I don’t ever want to be famous, infamous will do just fine.

I have fucked up this whole living business a great deal. I have not been perfect. I have acted out my trauma as I have tried to heal it. I have had liaisons with men that I shouldn’t have. I have loved deeply and reluctantly but with all I had available at the time. I have tried to be a good person along the way, with mixed results. Sometimes I have been very selfish. Sometimes I have not been selfish enough.

I ate the cookie. I did the thing. I dated the guy. I took the trip. I made horrible financial choices and I cleaned them up. I fucking have lived this life of mine. And that is not to say that I don’t think about, almost every day, all the things that I could have done differently or better or whatever. I do. But mostly, I enjoy the fuck out of this life I have right here. This one that I am living right now.

I am the best version of me I have ever been. I feel the most whole, attractive and complete that I have ever felt. I feel stable and real and as authentic as I have ever been. I am becoming less and less afraid of what waits for me, whatever fate might befall me, than I am of not living every single precious moment soaking it all in: my children, my parents, my friends, sex, adventure, fun, books, topics to write about, beautiful vistas to enjoy, sunrises and sunsets, people, experiences and to use all of these as vehicles to become the kind of person I am pretty sure God put me here to be. And I am fucking absolutely sure God does not want me to act like some washed up, afraid of other people’s opinions, middle aged woman who is terrified to own her power, her voice and her life.

FUCK THAT!

I do not want to act my age…often to the embarrassment of others, most especially my children or parents or a few of you judgey fuckers (mostly other middle aged women). I refuse to be what you define a 55 year old woman should be. You don’t get to put those kind of limits on my life and how I live it. I have always been old and young at the same time. It isn’t about the number, it is about what you do with all the time you are allotted. What you do with the wisdom you gain. What you do with this one precious fucking life that you get to live. I am not wasting it spending any time trying to live up to your impossible standards and ideas and opinions. I gave far too much of my youth away to that. So I am taking it back now, here in middle life which is a great fucking place to be. Enough money to do things you want, and not so much life that you are ground down to a withered, tired bland, dying version of yourself.

I will not act my age. Or maybe I will act it so well that I redefine it. I will be so completely 55 that I will alter it, mix it up and change it to that it looks as good as it feels.

There is a lot to be said for maturation. And there is a lot to be said for telling convention to fuck off. I am grateful for the anthems of my youth that called me to question everything, buck authority and blaze a trail that was my own. I have done that to the very best of my ability. Sure it almost killed me, but I rose from that fiery crash also. I lived, I loved, I persevered and I fucking grew up, but I refuse to act my age. What a bunch of nonsense really. I am going to just live and leave all that acting up to you. Living is a much better use of my time.

Again…still.

Fuck yes!