I agree with you…and I’ve tried really hard (and continue to try) to look at it that way. But somehow no matter how hard I try, the feeling creeps back at me repeatedly. I realize it’s just a response to the values that our society has pushed upon me, but it’s really powerful response. I’ve never really felt anything like this. The other things that I’ve been trained to want/be as a woman didn’t really speak to me in the same way — never felt pressured to have the big, beautiful wedding or to be conventionally feminine in almost any way… and yet, somehow, this is different.  I guess it’s partly because as a woman in our society, our youth is a source of power (that sounds really nauseating, and it is wrong that it is that way, but I think it’s true). And to have it, and then watch it slowly slip away from me is a terrifying thing. I aspire to be able to accept it. That was, I think, what I meant in my teens and early twenties when I proclaimed that wrinkles were beautiful and that I’d let myself go gray. I understood then that it was wrong to place youth on a pedestal and that there was value in age. But it was a lot easier for me to stand behind the truth inherent in that idea when I wasn’t going through the process. It’s partially all the above and partially the idea of age (not relating to beauty, etc.) at all. There’s just a shock in realizing that I am a physical being and like all other physical beings, I too will age and eventually die. There’s knowing something is true and then there’s seeing evidence of it. And so here I am.

I agree with you…and I’ve tried really hard (and continue to try) to look at it that way. But somehow no matter how hard I try, the feeling creeps back at me repeatedly.

I realize it’s just a response to the values that our society has pushed upon me, but it’s really powerful response. I’ve never really felt anything like this. The other things that I’ve been trained to want/be as a woman didn’t really speak to me in the same way — never felt pressured to have the big, beautiful wedding or to be conventionally feminine in almost any way… and yet, somehow, this is different. 

I guess it’s partly because as a woman in our society, our youth is a source of power (that sounds really nauseating, and it is wrong that it is that way, but I think it’s true). And to have it, and then watch it slowly slip away from me is a terrifying thing.

I aspire to be able to accept it. That was, I think, what I meant in my teens and early twenties when I proclaimed that wrinkles were beautiful and that I’d let myself go gray. I understood then that it was wrong to place youth on a pedestal and that there was value in age. But it was a lot easier for me to stand behind the truth inherent in that idea when I wasn’t going through the process.

It’s partially all the above and partially the idea of age (not relating to beauty, etc.) at all. There’s just a shock in realizing that I am a physical being and like all other physical beings, I too will age and eventually die. There’s knowing something is true and then there’s seeing evidence of it. And so here I am.

Dec 11 2011

Photo