This entry was posted on Thursday, September 18th, 2008 at 8:29 pm and is filed under General Word Vomit. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Did you know that you can escape an alligator by running in a zig zag motion? It’s true. I read it online.
It’s good information to have should you ever be knee-deep in the Everglades, I suppose, but not entirely practical for someone like me, who is only stuck in her own self-obsession. Still, having just spent several hours and a few hundred dollars at the salon eliminating all traces of gray from my hair, I have to wonder if there’s a better way to avoid the threats that plague me.
I’ll be honest: my 30s are not what I expected. Every magazine I’ve read since the age of 13 has lead me to believe that the issues I faced as a hormonal teenager would magically disappear when I became an “adult.” But at this particular juncture in my life, I find that I have little more poise and just as many physical issues as I did 20 years ago.
Perhaps my first mistake is in thinking that I am an adult.
Every technical definition of “adult” that I can find uses words like “mature” and “fully grown”, none of which I’d actually apply to myself. Mature is my mother, a woman who wears Coach and a mink coat. I barely have the grace to pull off a suit jacket let alone something that requires its own warm weather storage locker. My personal style is more comparable to that of the Manson girls. Trust me, looking dated does not equal looking mature.
As for being “fully grown”, I think the general refusal of my boobs to inflate past an A cup essentially leaves me hovering somewhere short of developed.
You can spare me the “love yourself, love your body” claptrap. I love myself just fine. What I do not love is waking up to aching joints and more zits on my chin than an adolescent boy who only eats pizza and French fries.
The aching joints I understand: in an effort to control a metabolism that has gone into hibernation, I must now exert more than double the energy it used to take to burn off a day’s worth of eating. I employ every calorie-burning trick out there: I stand when I’m on the phone, I take the stairs, I park my car four miles from my office building… all in addition to regular exercise. The result? An extra pound when I eat after 9 p.m. and aching joints from being on my feet all goddamn day.
The zits I have no explanation for, aside from the fact that my skin obviously hates me. My dermatologist called it “adult acne” – a term I never heard once when I was a teen. All I heard was, “You’ll grow out of it.” I didn’t grow out of anything; I grew into my zits the same way I’ve grown into habitually lying about my age.
I’ve been adding years on my age ever since I turned 16. Admittedly, I’m not doing it now to convince anyone to buy me alcohol or cigarettes. Giving myself an extra year or two is more of a head game for myself really, kind of like setting a clock ahead: you glance at it, panic initially, then relax when you realize you’re not as far along at you thought.
It’s not that I’m unhappy being in my 30s, mind you. Sex has never felt better and I’ve finally paid enough dues to have earned a good career and wonderful relationship. I just can’t help but feel as though age is something I’m being pursued by instead of something I’m trying to catch up to.
“Fight it” and “self destruct” seem to be my only options these days, which is a sad revelation when I have been hoping for a physical respite ever since I bought my first bottle of Benzoyl Peroxide.
So, if you need me, I’ll be the one running… in a zig zag. It can’t hurt, right?