35 years old. I will be 35 years old soon. Tomorrow in fact. It rest uncomfortable with me. I don’t want to know. I don’t want to get old..lets rephrase that I don’t want to look old…before my time. I’m ever so closer to forty but I feel 26 years old. I will be forever 26 years old. I know that’s shallow. I have a fear of looking old. Its sounds completly shallow. I know that. However its a fear that has been simmering since I hit 32 years old I have scrutinise every new wrinkle. I obsess over my crows feet (laugh lines sounds nicer) and don’t even get me started on my turky neck well the possible development of one.
You see I’m terrified of ahem looking like my mother. I love my mother but she well hasn’t aged well and every member of her family looks like her. Its a gene pool thing I can see that when I look at her sister, brother my grandfather and grandmother. You could say its due to smoking, drinking and not taking care of herself . All of which is true. My parents lived life. LIVED it. Yet health wise she is an amazing women for 67 years and I know thats the most important thing is her health. She will think, work and walk the pants of my 36 year old girlfriends but unless she opens her mouth she is often more often than not mistaken for a ‘old’ lady by old I mean 85. She has looked like that since she was in her early forties. She has been treated as an old lady since about then. She is dismissed, ignored and often treated like she is ‘simple’. It angers and frightens me. Getting old is crap. Every time I see her beautiful wrinkled face the bile in my stomach rises.
My constellation and only hope is that and its something my husband continues to enforce with what I suspect he hope is true is that I take after my father. An amazing man. He looks amazing. 70 years old looks like he is in his mid fifties, only has just started to turn grey and has a full head of hair, walks 12 kilometres a day (more to ex scape my mother than for fitness). He is amazing. Yet he never used sunscreen a day in his life worked shirtless construction, drank more than his fair of Gin and Tonics, Rum and ice and VB’s. Benson and Hedges were also his best friend until he was 46, having first met at 12 years old. His mother looked amazing. His sister and brother equally so. Smart and as fast a tack.
Me well I never smoked but drank my fair share of fish bowls and vodka orange when I was young(er), never used sunscreen until I was 26. The number of times I burnt and blistered is crazy but that’s was the seventies/ eighties/nineties I don’t think sun damage was really considered. Add to that my mother was forever saying (who is part Maori..therefor naturally darker I should mention) ‘get your lilly white legs out into the sun you look unhealthy hence the baking.
God dammit I’m terrified.
Its literally like waiting for lotto.
Am I the only one to think this way?
Now.. now.. I’m a 30 plus girl, hat wearing, olay regenerist mumma. Who may or may not be looking at getting a chemical peel…surly it doesn’t take 10 days to heal after looking like you have been burnt with a blow torch? We will see tomorrow shall we? I fully expect to wake looking like an old woman.
Any how. Its the weekend. I hate the weekends…this weekend even more so…lol.
Have a great Saturday my friends,
XX Deb
Ps Images via tom husseys series reflections.
