Getting Older Is Fucking Awesome

It's a privilege not afforded to everyone.

They say women become invisible as they age.

I turn 51 in a few weeks, and I can tell you that I feel anything but fucking invisible.

In fact, this era of my life is when I have felt like my richest, most complete self. I feel seasoned. Like someone ripened on the vine who has seen and known and come to understand things.

I’m not afraid of getting older. I relish it.

The wisdom feels grounded and protected in me. I know who the fuck I am and who the fuck I am not. I have standards and boundaries. I have no fucks to give stupid people and things and yet an abundance of curiosity and wonder and adventure, still. Maybe some of it is finally waking up for the first time.

I cherish quiet sunrises and gentle golden evenings with no agenda other than commiserating with the sparrows. I brook absolutely no fucking fools in my midst and find great satisfaction in shedding the long-tattered expectations of others that were stubbornly clinging to my back. Yesterday, I happily bought a pair of jeans a size BIGGER because I wanted them loose and boyfriend-y and I didn’t spare a single fucking thought to the number on the tag for potentially the first time in five fucking decades.

My circle is small but the space I give to the things I love is enormous.

I have learned that my work is not my identity and that I am so much more than I how I earn a fucking paycheck. I have de-centered men and romantic relationships because they’re largely a fucking disappointment and I have that much more energy, time and love to give myself, the person who has unwaveringly been there for me and to whom I owe many, many apologies for the ways I treated her in years past.

Instead of feeling invisible, I finally feel alive in my own fucking skin. I love the lines around my eyes carved through a lifetime of laughter, and the freckles and little pigmented spots that mean I probably spent too much time in the sunshine letting the light fall across my face. I’m not sorry that I have a poochy tummy or squishy hips and boobs that are uneven while they fight the good fight against five decades of gravity.

The world spends an egregious amount of money and time trying to force women into shrinking themselves.

Because we are fucking amazing. We are sacred. We create and bring life into the world, for fuck’s sake. We are wise and we feel greatly and we fucking know things and above all we are staggeringly, blindingly, earth-shatteringly powerful.

And they know it. So they will stop at nothing to keep us contained.

I fucking refuse. I refuse to shrink back and become less and hide the years that have greyed my hair and deepened my soul and sharpened my eyes (even while my reading glasses get stronger).

Those years are a triumph. A testimony for the paths I’ve walked and the beautiful child I created and gave to the world and the people whose lives I’ve touched and who have touched mine.

Aging is a fucking privilege, and not one afforded to all. And so I will celebrate it. With alacrity. With gratitude. With ferocity. And I will not fucking go gently into any good night.

Someday, universe willing a good many years from now, I will go sliding and skidding sideways into my grave, spent and worn and ragged, with every drop of life wrung while I smirk and tell the reaper himself that I had a really, really fucking good time.

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