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Outside of the viral Notes posts about the ages people have achieved things by, I only have to look at my own life for proof that age milestones are arbitrary guff. Aged 18, I still felt like a child as I celebrated my birthday at a Frankie and Benny’s thinking it was the height of cool, draining glasses of cola and shivering while wearing a backless dress in December.
Aged 21, I felt no different to 20, as I drank shots of tequila at a night club in London while wearing hotpants and a boob tube (it was the Christina Aguilera Dirrty era), and ended up being a chatted up by a man whose opening line was that he’d been cheated on four times and didn’t want me to break his heart. (He then ghosted me after we swapped numbers).
Aged 30, I was on the verge of marrying the love of my life, who threw me an incredible party. Something snapped in my brain when I saw all the Happy 30th Bday! cards and I cried because it felt impossibly old and close to death (yes, yes, I know). The only solution seemed to be to get horribly drunk and after I passed out in our dog’s bed, my late husband Rob scooped me up, and made me a bacon sandwich the next day.
In my 39th year, I banned friends from mentioning what we would do for our 40th birthdays because it seeped into every conversation we had, and I felt as if we would talk away the entire year without actually living the last year of our thirties. And then the pandemic came and we were all fucked and had to cobble together celebrations with the bare minimum and pretend that this is what we wanted all along anyway.
When I turned 40, it was proof that the distance between narrative and reality can sometimes be the depth of the Mariana trench. (More than 2,540 kilometres in case you are interested). The narrative was that turning 40 was bad, the beginning of the end, the tunnelling out of desire, the instant wizening of the self, the immediate cauterisation of everything that made you attractive (especially if you were a woman) the disintegration of your lower back, the long, slow march to decrepitude.
The mid-life crisis was part of the response to the narrative, and then became the narrative. Quitting your job, leaving the country, buying a convertible, selling your house, hooking up with someone much younger, getting a tattoo, piercing something new and interesting, joining a commune, abandoning bread and taking up sports challenges like ultramarathons and something involving mud and electrocution.
But the reality – for me anyway – was that none of this happened. I turned 40 and what I found was none of the angst of my 30s; instead I felt peace. It was small shift at first, growing stronger, offering clarity, a restfulness, a lack of guilt around certain decisions. A sense of honesty that wasn’t brutal but neutral. No, I am not going to that party because it is the other side of town. Yes, I am going to leave early so I can get eight hours of sleep. The realisation that no one ever gets to tell you ever, how to exist as a person.
Of course there was an inventory of the things I’d wanted to achieve by a certain age but I also had the wisdom and life experience to now appreciate all of the incredible things that weren’t even on the list in the first place, from writing five books to featuring in a nationwide ad campaign for a major fitness brand.
Me as a model for Sweaty Betty earlier this year aged 43
Having experienced a relatively long, stable period of peace, I thought I’d side-stepped the mid-life crisis. Look at me! How well adjusted I am! How amazing all that therapy was!
I’ve learned a lot but something I never seem to remember is how a) life will always find a way to humble you and b) nothing stays the same.
On the cusp of turning 44, I’ve felt a growing sense of discomfort. As if I am in a life that I crafted with love, but no longer fits. At first, I thought it was simply the grief that summer was over, that wanting to leave the country and sell my flat was part of wanting to escape the cold, soggy embrace of England in winter.
Then it crystallised into something else. When I thought about doing yet another year of the same thing, the same conversations and the same seasons – it felt as if an Atlas stone had been placed on my chest. I don’t really know that I want to leave the country, I just know that life feels like a hair shirt and it itches in places.
I was forced to interrogate why this is – and spoiler – I haven’t reached a conclusion. Part of it may be that something in my life needs to change, and this is merely the rumbling, the build-up like magma beneath the surface, eventually erupting into something beautiful and cleansing and necessary.
Part of it is also being exhausted at trying to navigate my forties under what feels like a starless sky. Of course there are plenty of people now talking about being in their forties and beyond, and road-mapping what my present and future may look like. But there is still a lot that is unknown, and trying to forge an identity in a world that isn’t exactly representative of people 40+ who are childfree or unmarried, can be draining.
A friend of mine said sweetly, but look at all the people you’re helping by all the new things you try! And think about how inspiring that is to other people also trying to navigate life! And after thanking her for the compliment I said yes, but I am a person trying to figure it out too.
I don’t know what the fuck I am doing most of the time. I’m trying to be guided by an inner voice while surrounded by other voices attached to lives that look nothing like mine. And while most of the time I can swagger through life with the confidence of someone who knows what they are doing, some of the time I can’t, and that time is now.
There are role models but the messages are still conflicted and contradictory. Most of the designated role models still are predominantly white and thin. Most are celebrated only if they don’t look their age. Ozempic is still rife – and now, not just among celebs but among women I know and their friends, and their friends. It is hard to know how to be when you realise that chasing youth yields to madness while the acceptance of age is hard when very few around us genuinely seem to be doing so.
For instance, I experience massive cognitive dissonance whenever I see celebrities such as Demi Moore talking validly and authentically about how beauty standards have impacted their lives, while also very visibly displaying an aesthetic that perpetuates those standards. (I love Demi, but I am also confused by the messaging.)
I want to be a better person than this, but recent videos of Christina Aguilera have also been yanking the lead on an internal monologue that borders on unhinged. She looks great! Why does she look great? Are you saying she looks great because she’s slim and impossibly young? How does she look that young? Why don’t I look that young? Wait - I don’t WANT to look that young. Etc.
I am a soon-to-be 44 year-old who does wrestling and lifts weights and has lots of tattoos, and I write and I don’t have children or a partner, and I love Champagne and I sometimes eat cold baked beans from a tin while standing up over the sink. These are the sum total of my choices, and I made these choices according to a strong internal compass.
I know so much more about life and this knowledge is RESTFUL. I love my friends, and even when I don’t or we disagree, we talk about things now rather than hiding the resentment like poisonous nuts in a tree.
Even though money is always an anxiety, I get to go on holidays, sleep with people I’m attracted to, refuse to date people who aren’t emotionally healthy and who make me feel bad about myself. I think I’m at the peak of my writing career, and I do work I love. Things feel mostly in balance.
Yet - I don’t know where I fit in, or what my life should be like, or even what I want it to be. But maybe the message is this: that my life is mostly good, peaceful and fun, and perhaps that is what feels strange. The lack of inner turmoil. Given how chaotic and sad parts of my thirties were, this decade has already far exceeded my expectations.
Or maybe that isn’t it at all. Either way, I am not expecting the revelation to drop into my lap at midnight on my birthday. Life is rarely that ordered, and as long as I don’t wake up in a dog bed, maybe life is okay just as it is.
(I’d love to hear from people in the comments - however, please do keep it respectful. I would love to hear from people who have made it through this uncomfortable part and how they did it - but please don’t diagnose me, tell me 44 isn’t old, or that I’m worrying about nothing as rarely is that helpful to anyone).
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Social commentary and essays from career to mental wellbeing, capturing the general WTF of life and topical news, by award-winning author, former HuffPost Exec editor and lifter of heavy weights, Poorna Bell.
I’ll be 72 yrs old in 4 days. I still feel mentally the same as I did at 30 y.o. For me, the key is to enjoy life, pursue your passions and get out and engage with life. At 45 yo I graduated from a Master’s program, became a nurse practitioner in internal medicine and started a new career. With 3 kids complicating the educational process, but I had a supportive family! Loved it… at age 56 I earned a doctorate, which put a lot of pieces of knowledge together.
I don’t do transitory trends or believe popular media regarding what women “ should be”. March to your own unique drum…
I went through a season of this last year. I felt incredibly anxious and guilty and depressed at the state of my life - childless, marriage-less renting. Part of it I think was peri-menopause but also the weight of years of being culturally shamed about not being married or having children, still renting 'at my age' and years of shaming myself. The weight of that idea of that I hadn't achieved that 'perfect' life. I have a good job, good family, and friends supportive relationships at church, I have so much going for me but I think I collapsed under the extra stress. I had to slowly unpick the lies from the truth and remind myself of what my core values are, and what I consider success apart from anyone else. A process of life-grief perhaps, maybe we should see it as that and allow it the required space and work.