Old Is Not a Four-Letter Word

The other day, I told someone I care about that I was getting older...and that some things strike me differently now.

She looked genuinely surprised. Maybe even a little shocked.

“What? Why would you say you're getting older? That's so negative. And it's not true. Why would you say that about yourself?”

I remember thinking, because I am.

I wasn't complaining. I wasn't putting myself down. I wasn't waiting for her to assure me that I didn't look a day over whatever age we're apparently still allowed to be.

I was simply saying that I'm getting older.

Which I am.

So are you.

I've noticed how uncomfortable we are with saying that, especially once we actually are older.  We dance around it.

Age is just a number.

You're only as old as you feel.

Sixty is the new forty.

Seventy is the new fifty.

Young at heart.

Okay. But why does seventy have to pretend to be fifty to be acceptable? What's wrong with seventy?

And why, when a woman says, “I'm old,” do people rush in to reassure her that she's not, as though she just said something terrible about herself?

I've been wondering about that. Because we don't seem to have nearly as much trouble with old things.

I love antiques. Give me an old piece of furniture with scratches, worn edges, and a little mystery about where it's been over something shiny and new any day.

I collect rocks. Talk about old.

We travel hundreds or thousands of miles to stand at the edge of an ancient canyon and stare at what time has created. We admire the layers. The erosion. The cracks. The places where wind and water have changed the landscape into something it couldn't possibly have been when it was new.

Nobody stands at the Grand Canyon wishing someone would fill in the wrinkles.

We love old trees with enormous trunks and branches twisted into odd shapes over the years.

We call them magnificent.

Yet somehow we've gotten the idea that people are supposed to remain untouched by time.

Especially women.

I'm not going to romanticize this. There are parts of getting older I could happily skip.

My body occasionally shows up loudly when I did not ask for it. People I love have died. Losses come with living long enough, and I have a different awareness of time I didn't have when I was twenty or thirty.

More lies behind me now than ahead of me. That's not morbid. It's math. And strangely, I don't find it depressing. It makes things matter.

Given the chance, I'm not sure I'd go back to being twenty. Or thirty. Unless, of course, I could take what I know now with me. Then I'd at least consider the offer.

But here's the problem with that little fantasy: I couldn't know what I know now without having lived what I've lived.

I had to screw things up.

I had to love people. Lose people. Trust some people I probably shouldn't have trusted and fail to trust myself when I should have. I had to change my mind, disappoint myself, forgive myself, begin again, and discover that some things I once knew with absolute certainty weren't quite so sure after all.

I'm not particularly interested in taking all those classes again. I've already paid the tuition.

There is something to be said for having lived long enough to really know yourself. And I don't mean finally discovering that you're wonderful.

I mean actually knowing yourself. The beautiful parts and the less attractive ones. The generous parts and the selfish ones. The wise woman and the woman who can still be astonishingly foolish.

I've spent much of my life trying to understand people and trying to understand myself. What I've discovered isn't a perfectly evolved woman who has finally gotten everything figured out.

Thank God. She'd probably be unbearable.

What I've found is a much more complicated woman, and I like her better.

I've come to understand that there is light and darkness in all of us. Strength and vulnerability. Wisdom and foolishness. Things I've judged as good and things I've judged as bad.

The older I get, the less interested I am in cutting myself into acceptable and unacceptable pieces. 

I'm also less certain that I'm the final authority on which is which.

I understand the balance of being human differently than I used to. Maybe the Universe knew what it was doing when it made us this complicated.

Maybe some of what I spent years trying to get rid of simply needed to be understood.

That feels like something age has given me.

So when we treat old as a word we need to protect ourselves from, I think we miss something. Old means I've been here a while. It means there are some miles on me.

There ought to be.

I've used this life.

I don't want to pretend I'm younger in order to prove that I'm still relevant, interesting, attractive, or alive.

And I'm increasingly amused by “You don't look your age” being one of the highest compliments we can give a woman.

What exactly is my age supposed to look like?

I look like me.

And I rather like that this face doesn't look exactly as it did thirty years ago. It shouldn't. That woman hadn't lived the next thirty years yet.

This authentic one has.

She's still curious. Still learning. Still changing her mind. Still writing. Still loving. Still screwing things up occasionally. Still discovering things about herself that make her stop and think, How did I miss that?

And still very much here.

So yes. I'm getting old.

I hope I get older. Quite a bit older, actually.

And if I'm fortunate enough to become a very old woman someday, please don't try to convince me otherwise.

I'll have earned every damn year.

Because old is not a four-letter word.

It's a life I've lived long enough to carry.

Love is ALL there is,

Diana