By Midge Callahan

My problem with aging is everything. Absolutely everything. Last week I dropped my water bottle in the parking lot, and it rolled under my car. I bent down to see where it rolled and immediately aborted the mission. The knees cracked, my butt hurt from working out the day before and I was thirsty. I wanted that water. However, getting the water required assuming a prone position on the ground to look under the car and that wasn’t happening, so I was forced to accept defeat and remain thirsty. 

Yesterday I was young, limber and moveable. Today I’m middle aged with wrinkles, bad knees, gray hairs, unwanted hair in unwanted places, a different body shape, mood swings and hot flashes. I don’t remember signing up for middle age. As a girl I never dreamed of being “middle aged.” Does anyone? I envisioned myself with kids, but somehow in my mind’s eye I remained young, no matter the age of my children. 

When I look in the mirror now I shudder because I see my mother..and grandmother. This is new. This is a fright. I think what really gets me is while I was aging, I was too busy to notice. I was too busy to stop and snap some photos and soak in my youthful body and my “Unaffected by time” face. (If only iPhone and selfies were a thing of the early 2000s.) Instead, I was obsessed with the faces of my children that were growing and changing while being blithely unaware of my slowly sagging jowls and the deepening eleven lines between my eyes. 

The worst thing about aging is the direct correlation to time. Time won’t take a break; we can’t put time in a time out and tell it to “Sit there until I come back and get you!” So..we get older, and our faces become...well, droopier. I won’t be getting a facelift, so I need to accept that my youth and beauty (albeit mediocre) are on their way to extinction. I’ve been forced to ask myself. Why am I so bothered? Because I really am bothered!

I think the biggest shock to my system is that I’ve actually arrived at this station in life. I knew it was coming, we all know it’s coming, but now that I’ve arrived, it doesn’t square with how I feel on the inside. I feel the same way I did at thirteen, seventeen, twenty-five and so on. I don't “feel” age.

How do you even feel an age? I just am the age that I am. But the most obvious identifier of that age—for anyone looking—is my face.

And that feels… tragic.

Midge Callahan is a 54-year-old writer, mother, and reluctant yoga enthusiast who lives somewhere between hot flashes and enlightenment. After years spent raising kids, running a business, and forgetting where she put her glasses (they’re on her head), she’s finally writing the stories she used to tell over coffee. Midge believes in good books, long walks, and laughing at the absurdities of aging—especially when her knees don't cooperate.