Birthday and the beginning of my memoirs – an indulgence

Monday, 6 March, 2023

I am seventy-five.

You know what. I have written that line in my head over and over for the past almost-year. I wanted to be able to say it but every time I could, I actually couldn’t. I couldn’t write those words. I knew why. I didn’t want to be that.

On this very day it’s my birthday, so I can write those words for only another few hours – according to the memory of my time of birth – what was it again?? Then it will be another number, a bigger one, a scarier one. And the birthday greetings keep coming so what can I do? Head out of sand.

I can’t put this number together with the reality of how I feel. I’ve read about this for so many years now. Age and how you feel don’t always go together. Sometimes I am in my mid twenties – I like to say 26. It’s the age I was when I got married and in some ways got stuck – and other times I say eleven – I am just so silly. I feel like I have no age. My mind isn’t connected to that.

At a very young age someone suggested that ‘When you get older, you will change your mind about that’ (whatever that was at the time) and I replied confidently: ‘That’s not who I am. I always like how today is and I think I’ll still feel that way then too.’ I was right. I don’t let myself get stuck in the past. I enjoy change and innovation. I do like to think back and some stuff has remained my preference, but no. I love today. I live around people who are stuck – what they wear, their music, their sense of what is ‘good.’ I can’t get behind that way of thinking. It’s too subjective.

What a time I’ve had. How many things I’ve been able to experience in their own time. How could I have been open to those things had I been stuck? I feel annoyed at how many things I will never get to see because I’m not here. We’ve created an awful world in so many ways but then we’ve also created some amazing things and I got to experience them. How lucky.

I don’t think this feeling of no-age is just mine. I’ve heard it from so many people throughout my life. I don’t think anyone has ever attached an age to me. They could call me child-like but they call me ageless. Whatever that means. I’m me – Janice. Is my agelessness really me or is it denial?

I’ll take a short detour to talk about appearance. Everyone in my family looks younger than they are. I’m that way. I used to love, now roll, with hearing ‘You’re HOW old? Are you sure?’ Sure, it can be flattering but it doesn’t detract from how I feel looking in the mirror at my softer and ever-softening self. I hate my baggy eyes, the pouchiness that is my neck and chin, any lines that appear anywhere (not that many, thanks genes) my weight gain, the way my body is crepey and ropey and falling towards the floor. The way my breast surgery, which at first hardly showed, now makes one breast look (to me) half the size of the other. I am vain and I know it. The way my knees hurt and my hips get stiff and sore. Not being able to walk, climb, get off the floor or out of the bath. My voice feeling weaker. The way I get dazed when I laugh too long or cough too much. I think, ‘Who is this person? Who have I become?’ And, yes, how much worse will it get? Then I try to metaphorically get up off the floor and on with living with who I now am.

I’m doing my best to live every day. I’ve lived with fear my whole life, or almost. It’s slowed me down and made me miss a lot. But I’ve still done a lot. The price of freedom and today-living is high, I won’t lie about that. I’m reaping some difficult crop now. Today is not the day to dwell on that. I’ve dwelled on it a lot. No choice. Life right now is very difficult but I have to live.

That’s my birthday message so that I write those beginning words before it’s not true anymore. I’m pleased that I did it finally. It was my last chance.

Back to being ageless now. Thanks.

I’m a scaredy-cat but I’m being brave and posting this. (Hit publish, Jan.)