On getting older and living outside of the societal template
The fresh hell of redefining yourself when none of the existing definitions fit
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The other day, I was visiting my parents, who live deep in the Kent countryside, which in November is filled with upward twists of mossy beech trees and damp piles of amber-coloured leaves slick with rain. We slip into our little routines quickly and easily – my father makes me tea as soon as I arrive, my mother tries to feed me everything in her fridge. In the afternoons, my father goes for a daily nap as he has done pretty much since he was 18, and while he sleeps, my mother and I shell peanuts in the living room and watch one of her film recommendations, which are almost always terrible, featuring actors we have never heard of.
That afternoon, we were watching a film in which the main protagonist, a successful chef, was being harangued by her mother about finding a partner and having children. “I don’t want you to be lonely!” her mother cries. My mother paused the TV, laughed and said to me: “Is any of that chiming with you?” It was a half-joke, in that she’s not entirely serious, but she’s not entirely joking either.
While I’ve been lucky to have parents that aren’t the Asian stereotype of endless nagging around finding a partner and having children, I know that my mother wants these things for me. The statute of limitations on being left alone as a widow expires around year six, I have discovered. Once, after a large cognac, she told me that her dream was for me to get re-married and have children. I suggested that she might want to find another dream.
I don’t blame my mother for having those ambitions for me. Being in her seventies, she is representative of her generation and most mothers her age cannot conceive happiness or fulfilment exists outside of that. Normally I would brush this off, but the feeling that my mother wants a different life for me is trickling into a larger pool of discomfort around who I am and where my life is heading. Perhaps this is because my 43rd birthday is in a couple of weeks, and for the first time since entering my forties, I find myself in unfamiliar territory.
When I turned 40, I fully expected to have an existential crisis. Partly because I had seen older friends and family members grapple with their identity, and partly because I had a fear of getting older. (The latter due to the fact that visibility for women over the age of 40 was so poor across every industry, and the pervasive narrative that ageing means a diminishing of every aspect of yourself from desire to cognitive.)
But when it arrived, I didn’t experience that at all. I felt powerful, soaked in clarity and it was evident a new era was upon me, and for the better. I didn’t experience the usual style wobble either (which isn’t just about aesthetics but is a deep expression of what is going on with the self). I knew exactly how I wanted to dress: tassels, leather, PVC, tailored jackets, big boots, black, shiny, sparkly, comfortable yet edgy, expensive-looking on a mid-level budget.
But now, I am not so sure.
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