Mirror, Mirror, On The Wall

I turned “double nickels” last month, and it hasn’t been kind. Come to think of it, 53 and 54 weren’t exactly my friends, either. Life has definitely been good, don’t take me wrong. But by today’s standards, these last few years have had their way with me. Mostly my face and neck. and maybe my knees.

Our world, society, newfangled things like social media, have somehow set this crazy, unattainable, ridiculous standard that only teenagers who know how to use camera filters can reach. I’m not one to really compare myself to all that, but dang, can someone explain to me where all this loose skin has come from?!?

I’m no crunchy, granola, birkenstock, flower child, but I’m also no refined, peeled, injected, stretched, over-the-top diva, either. Somewhere in the middle is where I hover (with most all things, actually) and I continually make my peace with it.

Except for this loose skin.

If you’ve hung around for a minute, you know The Lawyer has a YouTube channel, “Lawyer In The Kitchen,” (his fantastic cooking channel to which you need to go subscribe) and I’m the camera man. The main camera is on a tripod and I hover around with the mobile-cam. Our editor/producer, Seth, knows that if he puts any clips of me from the tripod-cam showing me filming with the mobile-cam, and I look down and the loose skin on my neck wads up, he’s fired. Straight up fired. It’s an issue.

Now look, I’m not one to go under the knife for no good reason. And by good reason I mean like tumors, endometriosis, bad appendix, rotten gallbladder, and the like. But wrinkly neck and chin? Meh.

So it leaves me with a love/hate thing, that I, well, love/hate.

I wish we, as a society, would just take a step back, re-group, and realize we’ve gone too far. And can we just stop it with the eyebrows? Please?

Pretty please?

Some of ya’ll gonna be looking like you just got out of the clown car at the old folks home.

But you get to do you, and I get to do me, and we all get to happily co-exist. Except for me and this loose, wrinkled up, wadded up skin. There’s no love there. I don’t mind my gray hair. In fact, I like it. I don’t mind hearing myself say “I’m 55.” I just don’t enjoy my face sagging off of my face. Or my elbows. I have old lady elbows. Please don’t take a photo of me from behind when I have on short sleeves. The piled up loose skin is more than I want to see.

I think, though, that what really, truly bothers me about all this is that it means I’m closer to the end than to the beginning, and I don’t enjoy that fact. I read all the quips about “wrinkles mean I smiled,” and “gray hair means I made it to an age many don’t,” and such, and I have an appreciation for those sentiments. But I’m just not ready to be there yet. I’m too young to be there yet. Yet, here I am. Trying to embrace the fact that now I’m the older lady at the church get-together. I’m quite old enough to be a grandma. I get to retire in fifteen years instead of it being forty-five years away. 

Perspective has shifted.

And it’s a love/hate.

Can’t I just get to this point without all the saggy skin?

It’s true, with age comes wisdom. Mostly, I think, because we’ve learned from all the stupid things we did when we were younger. Here we are. Supposedly full of enough hindsite to not do the stupid things again. Or maybe we’re just too tired. Or maybe this loose skin creates too much drag and we just don’t have the energy to fight it. Whatever the case, here we are, in all our wrinkled glory. Well, at least some of us. The rest of us? Stretched further than the arms on a Stretch Armstrong doll.