So this is 50

How the fork did this happen

Today is my 50th birthday.

Being 50 is nothing like I thought it would be. I thought I would feel much more competent by now. I thought I’d be more comfortable with responsibility and authority (I’m a youngest child so….). I thought I would be able to plan and execute a week of meals more than once every three months. But I also thought I’d be more afraid of my more closely impending death or feel frantic about running out of time.

I was wrong about all of that. For one thing, it just doesn’t feel like I’m 50 at all. Whatever 50 is.

I’m not sure what age I feel. In terms of uninterrupted sleep, I think I might be a newborn again. Not great.

My preferred wardrobe these days is that of a 2 year-old. If it don’t stretch, I don’t mess.

In terms of wonder and delight, I can rival any four year old (have you guys seen this flying orb thing? I need this).

In terms of devotion to my dog, I’m around 8. I will say that when I was actually 8, I did not have to clean up my dog’s waste products.

In terms of bouts of hormonally-induced drama, I’m around 13. Perimenopause is an absolute gangster. Like I think Perimenopause may have killed both Tupac and Biggie.

In terms of puppy love and googly-eyes for my crush, I’m 16. My bae gives serious rizz, no cap. ¹

In terms of wild-eyed dreams for my future, I’m 18. Possibilities open up every day. But I do need more and more glasses to see them. OMG. SO. MANY. GLASSES. Between me and my husband, we live in a mountain range of glasses. I was not prepared for this.

In terms of imposter syndrome, I’m 25. Do I have any clue what I am doing half the time? I do not. Of course, that may be early dementia instead of imposter syndrome.

But in terms of I-don’t-give-a-fork brazenness, yes, I’m 50. If not 90. Is that what confidence is? Exhaustion? Insanity? All of the above?

I’m not really sure what all it is, but one thing it definitely is, is FREEDOM.

And mostly 50 feels like that.

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I went to college in kind of a crappy town with not an insignificant amount of crime. My campus wasn’t in the nice part of town, either. I would go walking and running outside by myself in the surrounding neighborhood on full alert, clutching my mace, eyes darting back and forth, my stomach in a knot. Just waiting to be assaulted.

My normal route passed a house where an older man in a huge cowboy hat sat in a wheelchair on his porch almost daily. He would smile and wave. I was convinced he wasn’t actually disabled, and if I gave him so much as a half-grin, he would launch out of his wheelchair and grab me and add my head to his collection in the freezer.

But my fear of being fat was far greater than my fear of being serial-killed. So out I went, on the regular, trying to run from the pounds I was sure were stalking me. Trying to work off the calories and shame of my latest binge. Eventually I moved indoors to aerobics classes, the stair climber, swimming laps.

I was afraid no one would ever want me. So I married the first person who would cooperate.

Then I was afraid to leave when that inevitably turned out badly.

I was afraid to fail. Always and in everything.

And ultimately, I was afraid to go to hell. Every damn day of my life for decades.

It’s ironic, because evangelical theology is supposedly “Good News!” that peddles peace of mind packaged in certainty about one’s eternal destination. All you have to do is accept Jesus as your personal savior, and you can sleep well at night.

I never slept well at night.

Because how do you decide to believe? You either do or you don’t, and it’s hard to tell the difference sometimes. How do you know Jesus lives in your heart? It’s not like he signs a lease.

So you pray that damn sinner’s prayer multiple times a day. You pray it in the morning when you wake up, first thing, in case you slip in the shower. But you could get hit by a car or fall out of a tall tree during the course of your day. So you pray it more. You definitely pray it before you go to bed, lest you die in your sleep. You pray and you pray and you pray. Because you imagine yourself engulfed in flames, screaming in agony, forever and ever. So you pray and you pray some more.

And then one day, or over the course of many days, you decide that that’s no way to live. That kind of god is no god to serve. And you realize the people who sold you on it are no better or better off than anyone else. A lot of them are a lot worse, in fact.

They don’t know anything more than anyone else. Maybe they legitimately believe and they are indeed at peace, but it’s not because they’ve made peace with not knowing. Not controlling. It’s just that they’ve achieved the illusion of certainty about the inherently uncertain. They’re grasping at the reins of a wild, runaway horse. They feel like they’ve made progress on a 50 ka-jillion piece puzzle with most of the pieces missing.

If that’s how they want to spend their lives and their energy, that’s their choice. Maybe it gives them joy, what do I know.

I’ve long since given up on knowing.

And guess what, you actually sleep well at night when you get in bed with a good mystery. And it feels like becoming the wind itself to throw your hands in the air and gallop across the plains on an unbridled stallion. And you find out you have more of the puzzle solved than you thought when you stop trying to make the pieces fit.

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These days, I often walk or run alone at night. I stay in well-lit, well-trafficked areas, I’m not a fool. But I’m not afraid.

Like virtually all women, I’ve been groped and grabbed and harassed and menaced over the course of my life. It’s not a baseless fear we have. But I’ve gotten tired of it. And I figure all the creeps—just like all the decent men, if they are honest—would prefer someone younger and prettier. Definitely someone more easily intimidated.

I try to wear my growing invisibility as an older woman like a super hero cape. I can slip through cracks and lurk in corners and quietly watch out for other, younger women.

I stay strong, too. Deceptively strong. And I imagine, perhaps fantastically, that if it came down to it, I would beat the living hell out of anyone who would lay a finger on me or any female in my vicinity. I would unleash decades’ worth of compounded, high-interest-yield female rage on the idiot who would try.

When I don’t want to go to my workout, this is what I think of. That and successfully rising off the toilet unassisted many years hence.

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One thing I discovered from having gone through a few polygraphs is that I am a terrible liar. I’m not even a good teller of the truth-as-I-know-it, because I am terrified the whole time that I might be inadvertently lying even if I can’t imagine what I could be lying about and I feel guilty about that and that all comes out in a polygraph, by the way.

One of my polygraphs ended with me tearfully declaring my undying love for America. I’m sure the video of that one has made the rounds.

People raised in strict religious environments tend to struggle on polygraphs. Unless they are narcissists or sociopaths, and honestly, there are A LOT of those in strict religious environments. Those folks too often run those shows, in fact. Sociopaths, incidentally, ace polygraphs without breaking a sweat. They also make excellent megachurch pastors.

But I digress. My point is I can’t lie worth a damn. So I’m not gonna lie to you here and tell you I’m completely fearless now and have triumphed over all and rah rah rah me.

In fact, I’m still afraid of the most idiotic, inconsequential, completely meaningless thing in the world. And it’s embarrassing.

I’m still afraid of being fat. And to be clear, there’s objectively nothing wrong with being fat or gaining weight, particularly if you are still healthy and strong.

There IS something wrong with being terrified of gaining weight at 50 whole human years old. I’m far less ashamed that I have gained some weight over the last few years than I am of the fact that it bothers me so much. I mean, am I going to be in my coffin upset about the weight registered on my death certificate? (answer: yes, I will. On the other hand decomposition is an excellent way to lose weight). It’s frankly outrageous and absolutely a waste of my very valuable time and far beneath my dignity and the energies of my exceedingly interesting mind.

To my credit, I have come a long way. I don’t try to make myself throw up the way I did when I was younger. I don’t go into a tailspin when I get on the scale. I don’t think about it for large portions of my day. I am able to feel pride and gratitude and confidence about my strength and health completely apart from my weight and appearance.

But given all the other fear I’ve shed—of hell itself!—and all the peace I’ve made—with DEATH, for pity’s sake—and all the love and acceptance I’ve found, both without and within—Why in the fork do I still care at all about this? It makes me spitting mad.

I could blame a society that values women primarily for their appearance and sexual usefulness, which is probably built on the evolutionary biology of it all, above which we should have long ago risen as a species. But that’s humanity for you, truly pathetic at times. I could blame my high-control religious upbringing that some studies indicate may cause higher rates of eating disorders.

But at my age, that’s a cop-out, like an African dictator blaming colonialism for his nation’s poverty. I have long since owned this. And I am too damn old for it.

But I would like to wear my favorite pants again. Life is short, and those are very nice pants. I’m going tweak a few things, try a little harder, see if I can’t lose 10 pounds or so for the 754th time. Then I’ll be truly happy.

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I didn't expect aging to be so communal. Like the best inside joke amongst my friends. Or maybe like an adventurous quest to find buried treasure.

In my mind, me and my Gen-X cohort are forever the Goonies or the Breakfast Club, except instead of battling criminals and scary-looking-but-harmless ogres we are battling back pain and getting scary-looking-but-harmless polyps removed from our colons. And instead of sitting in detention rolling our eyes at the authorities, we are sitting at the dinner table, rolling our eyes at some teens rolling their eyes at the authorities.

I didn’t expect to always see my husband and friends as young in a way. Definitely for those I see on the regular, their aging is barely perceptible. Probably because I didn’t bring the right pair of glasses. But that seems to be true even if I don’t see them often, or well, and even in cases of more dramatic aging. In my mind, we remain and ever will be a bunch of irreverent, incorrigible, under-parented, undefeated badass kids. And my husband is still the young hottie with the movie-star smile.

When I look in the mirror, well, it’s not always a 100% pleasant experience (although far preferable to a camera. What is it with those). But again, I do this every day. It’s not as if I am aging right before my very eyes like the dude in Indiana Jones and Last Crusade.

He chose…poorly.

And I gotta figure my friends still see me the way I see them, young and dewy. If they don’t, they should never, ever tell me. And if they do tell me, they are dead to me anyway.

The older I get, the greater affection I have for this generational community, thrown onto the earth together and doing this thing called life at the same time (and also with Prince).

And yes, like Prince, we will soon start passing from this life together, too. Some of us already have. But the pace is bound to pick up. Sooner than it seems, it will be my turn.

Is that sad? Sure. Honestly, death is a f-ing outrage. But timed right, it’s also a sacred thing, and a respectable thing. To have done your best, to have built anything at all with the years and the tools you’ve been given, be they basic or broken or powerful, is pretty amazing. To have experienced any kind of love at all is sublime. To have lived with any amount of courage, knowing the whole time—the whole time!—you are going to die eventually is honestly pretty damn impressive.

And then, to quietly slip out the exit and ride home bathed in moonlight on a path at once solitary and lined with so many who have gone before, well, where is the terror in that.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not ready to die. I don’t want to die. It’s animal instinct to fear death. We never quite stamp that out, otherwise more of us would take up base jumping or voluntarily fly with toddlers (oh death, where is thy sting).

But I’m OK with it. I have my friends with me. And we walk this road together, we play this second half as a team, the way we always have. That’s what it’s always been about, this entire time.

And dammit I’m proud of us, the ones who have been brave enough to grow, who have doggedly pursued the things we needed to do that, who have stitched up wounds and glued pieces back together. Who have gotten up and gotten help and gotten out. Or who have stuck it out and stuck together and gotten unstuck. I look around, and I see miracles of all kinds, each one a gem formed over time and under pressure and uniquely cut to sparkle just so.

When I was young, I couldn’t imagine reaching this distant land called 50. From that far away, it looked depressing and foreboding and just entirely un-fun. Like a nondescript door in a dark, dirty alley. Just walking towards it seemed dreadful.

But then you reach it, and when you knock, a little window opens. You know the magic words, you’ve known them all along. You just have to remember (and honestly, that’s not easy). And then you go inside. And it’s the most dazzling place, with joy and light and glitter and all the coolest people. A party for the ages for as long as it lasts. Because the attendees finally accept that it won’t last forever.

You do have to leave your baggage at the door. But why wouldn’t you? You’ve never needed any of that stuff.

And what are you waiting for? Come on in, it’s getting late.

1. This is Gen Z for, “My husband is a very attractive gentleman.”