Welcoming a 40-Something to 40

Congrats 40-something woman! Today you are one day closer to your death bed. If you weren’t already experiencing hip and back pain, sensitivity to temperature, or worried about the elasticity of your skin, or the mysterious increase in your weight, you should be by now. I read online that 40 is the new 20. If that’s true then why can’t I drink vodka straight out of a bottle at 1 am and then wake up 6 hours later and work for 8 hours at my part-time, toilet-scrubbing job, before taking it easy after my shift by drinking hard cider in the woods? If that is true then why am I excited about buying a new pot holder and finding hair dye that covers the gray and I’m not excited about the anticipated time that I’ll get home from a dinner party because I can’t sleep well if I don’t get in bed by 930? And what if I get heart burn? How is it that I don’t remember why I walked into a room but I can remember all the lyrics to Give It Away by the Red Hot Chili Peppers? Is it some sort of delayed reaction from doing whippets at a Dave Matthew’s concert in 1994? Why does my back hurt after sleeping on my mattress-toppered bed, where I slumber in total darkness, sometimes but not always after taking a concoction of herbal supplements and sometimes but not always pharmaceutical drugs? I used to lie about why I was late to work-a traffic jam as a cover for an afterschool make out session. Now I lie about hearing what others say- a head nod of agreement as a cover for worn and torn ear nerves. Someone recently asked me if I’d prefer my 30-year old body or brain. At the ripe young age of 30, I was in the middle of a baby sandwich, 2 years after the first and 2 years before the second. I trusted my body then. I was merely a passenger to its power, a witness to its wonder. My 30- year old body flexed and bent. It expanded and contracted. It opened itself to the world with selflessness. With wisdom. It heard a thousands year old, silent language and it answered with fluency. My body, it’s always shape shifting. It surprises me. Like this morning, when I did a squat with 3 pound weights and felt a deep and quick tectonic plate-like shift in my lower back. My brain is a library. It must be culled and curated. Shelves must be dusted. My card catalog recently began the process of transferring to an online database. Bindings are broken and in need of repair. While content is being digitized, many volumes are missing. My brain was once a Little Free Library, full of cast offs, an occasional large print Reader’s Digest mystery. An unsolicited Bible. It was exciting and unpredictable. My brain is now the Encyclopedia Britannica. Spanning volumes, loaded with editors and contributors. Fact checked and fucking well- written and authoritative as hell. Using outdated language and slightly less relevant or perhaps underappreciated. I’m worth money on eBay. You can find me at yard sales.

My 30-year old brain was sharp and malleable. It processed quickly. It absorbed so much. It recalled words with expediency- words like table and refrigerator. It completed sentences without stopping for a moment of silence, a moment to search for an idea that dissolved with a breath. My younger brain was its own worst enemy. My 30-year old mind told me lies, convinced me to be afraid, to not trust myself, and find fault and comparisons in all that I did. It created a narrative that felt so real that I believed it to be true. My brain. It lies. But it has changed. It is always adapting. It’s helping me write a new, truer narrative. It surprises me. Like today when I remembered all the words for the all things I wanted to say, like computer and pony, and didn’t leave my lunch out on the counter like the past three days. It is kinder to me now and that has only come with time, therapy and pharmaceuticals.

I would not want to have a dinner party with my 30-year old brain but I would like to work out in my 30-year old body. Or at least be able to tie my shoes without fear of pulling a back muscle.

I would choose my body. Where is the time machine to take me back to snatch my body? So, congrats 40- something woman. You have arrived. This is the truth. You don't get to choose your decade-younger body or a more youthful brain. You’ve got what you’ve got. 40 is not the new 20. It’s 40. It’s you