Jane Fonda Inspired This

I have never been one to blindly be pulled by time. I think I probably came to be this way from the start of this life. Alert, investigative, sensitive. Very sensitive. I am a thinker and I remember telling my mentor at university, Dr. Streeter, “I know, I think too much, don’t I? I’ve been told that before.” She said, I’ve always been a thinker, and I too was told, many times,  that I think too much. If you ask me, she said, people don’t think enough. I couldn’t believe she said that to me, it never occurred to me that my thinking was a good quality, a positive thing. Today, I am grateful for the way my mind works, and, for the way my heart feels so much, so deeply—all the way down to the cells hidden in my bone marrow, that make the hair on my arms stand straight up. Even as I am left exhausted and spent from all the various and sundry energies intermingling with my spirit on the daily, I am grateful for the person I have always been, and the person that is becoming in me, at any given moment, as time moves on and forward, as change insists itself upon my body, my journey, my life. Change, is, and always will be.

At seven, I thought I would be dead by 18. At 18, I thought, surely I’ll be gone by 22. Then it was 30. I’ll be 50 on October 12, and, although I could die tomorrow or by next year, or in three or 20 or 40, I am still here, right now, I am here. It is certainly curious that I spent so many years thinking that I would not get the chance to live, ever, let alone to see 50; especially being someone who has always been so acutely, alive. 

I had a doctor’s appointment late last year, and the receptionist, in an astonished tone, commented that I don’t look my age. I replied the standard, “Aw, thank you.” And then, almost immediately, I told her that I had changed my mind. That I wanted to take back my “thank you.” I understand why we, as womxn, take that compliment, relieved, as a badge of honor. In this society, aging womxn are judged exponentially more harshly than men. I get that. But in general, older people, old people, are discarded by society; it is as if, one becomes invisible, with age. The elderly are oftentimes treated as if they are in the way, not beautiful or sexy, no more dreams or goals. And that is just not true. At all. I get why I initially took that compliment, as a compliment. But I have decided to, intentionally, discard it. It is a gift to be here still, to age, to love, to learn more about myself, the other humxns, the creatures, the world all around me, and the Universe, that loyal and loving Energy that made me and everything. I am  not afraid to die one day; I believe there is so much more beyond that ebony sky, I spend so much time looking at. But I am not afraid to live either. 

You don’t have to feel the need to tell me I’m not aging. I am.  Today, I’m good with that. Maybe I won’t be next week. Who knows. The point is, I get to learn to love myself—more and more thoroughly—through all of my changes. Through all of my decisions. Through all of my wrinkles. Self-love, through and through.