I feel much the same way about getting older as I do about parenting, in that it was much easier to do well before it actually happened to me.
Before I had children, I didn’t believe in kids’ menus and screen time and being bullied into buying a 9-year-old hot pink Jordans. My imaginary children were organic and free range and securely attached. They weaned themselves and enjoyed reading books I also enjoyed reading and played gently and kindly both independently and together.
My real 8-year-old, halfway into the second Avatar, sighed extravagantly and announced, “finally, some real violence”. He likes backflips and eating paper and making his friends laugh by pulling ever more unhinged stunts (ranging from jumping out the window during class all the way through to licking the urinal for lols) until he gets proper told off, which he does not like at all.
My 10-year-old gives no shits about being told off. He does what he wants, and, perhaps more importantly for those of us who happen to be his parents or teachers, he does not do what he doesn’t want. What he wants is mostly to make Pokemon decks, talk about making Pokemon decks, do terrifying parkour moves on the tramp, and eat vast quantities of dairy products, to which he is mildly intolerant. What he does not want is everything else. He has never played independently in his entire life.
They both resist any food that isn’t wrapped in plastic, have to be paid to read, and, unless anaesthetised by a screen, need to be separated every 15 minutes before one of them bites the other.
All this to say: when my intentions met my actions, they found each other wanting.
Similarly, before I was actually 40, I had very strong opinions about how I would age. In the second half of my thirties, once the baby fog had mostly lifted, I felt pretty fucking smug about myself. I lifted weights and gave up gluten and went to bed early. I even stopped dyeing my hair for a while and made noises about going grey gracefully (mostly because I wasn’t yet). The me who was still in her thirties would never even think about Botox.
But then I turned 43, and the low-level hum of general concern that had flicked on in November 2022 cranked itself up a notch. I started noticing that, for example, when a book about appreciating your life laid out the years of an average lifespan as a series of boxes, my current box was distressingly far down the page.
A rough patch of skin appeared on one elbow and refused to go away. A band of extra padding appeared around the top of my waist and both thighs. My neck skin, never the tautest, seemed to have lost its hold on my chin.
My kids were getting older. My husband’s hair was getting thinner (but somehow, along with the threads of grey in his beard, this was a sexy development? Fuck men).
My jeans weren’t getting tighter, but only because I was too scared to put them on.
My resolutions to get really fit next year started taking on a slightly hysterical air, as I realised that bouncing too hard on the trampoline felt less like a bladder risk, as in years past, and more like I was in danger of shattering into actual pieces like a particularly brittle stick of soft, pale chalk.
My casual approach to school pickup (also known as “working from home oh shit oh shit it’s 2:30 grab a couple of yoghurt pots and put on a bra where are the fucking keys”) was tested by patches of hyperpigmentation appearing on the sides of my cheeks. It was one thing to be no-makeup casual about my freckles and crow’s feet, but my face suddenly looked like the back of a pensioner’s hands.
And, worst of all, I noticed in the mirror that the skin around my lips had started creasing into deep lines when I spoke. I felt like I’d gone straight from my early thirties to a pack-a-day smoker named Verna with her lip liner bleeding out like a scarlet map of an ancient river system.
So, late last year, I spent an undisclosed (because I have not yet disclosed it to my husband) sum of money letting a very lovely lady named Faye (who looked like she was wagging school but who assured me she was 46, which was all the incentive I needed) laser my face off, which felt exactly like having your face lasered off.
And then I spent four or five days swollen up like a pale-pink moon, watching in interest as my freckles and old-lady-hand-spots pushed themselves up and out of my skin, where they flaked off in crispy black drifts.
When this fascinating but also quite gross process was completed, I felt taut and polished and as shiny as a new penny. For at least a couple of weeks.
And then Verna’s riverbed mouth started bothering me again and I went back and spent a smaller amount to have her stab me all over with tiny needles, which was less unpleasant than the laser but still felt very similar to being stabbed all over with tiny needles.
It was at about this point that I began to wonder if maybe the best intentions in the world aren’t adequate protection against a system set up to make women feel bad about themselves, and to convince them that they only have value if they’re young and pretty — or at least as long as they’re not old.
But I still gave Faye money to stab me again.
It’s a slippery slope, attempting to hold back time and gravity. I still don’t want Botox, although sometimes I find myself daydreaming about facelifts, and I’m dyeing my hair again. I convince myself that I’m doing okay because I still often don’t wear makeup to school pick-up, but I know deep down that that’s laziness and bad time management rather than any kind of principle, and I only feel confident about it because of Faye and her expensive torture.
The 43-year-old me in my head is casual and wise, and knows that life experience and being able to spell heaps of hard words is worth far more than an unlined forehead and thighs as sleek as a teenage seal. But the me in my head also has kids who read for fun and never lick urinals, so it can be hard to trust her advice.