The other day, an article appeared on my Twitter feed about a recent study that found that "old talk" is as damaging to self esteem and emotional wellbeing as "fat talk." In other words, we do some kind of psychic harm to ourselves if we say things like "I'm old and feeble" when we're really middle aged and pretty much okay. I'd really like to stop this kind of running commentary about my imagined decrepitude, but whenever I try, somebody reminds me that I'm aging.
I went to the dermatologist the other day for a routine visit, and in the midst of it all he told me that the redness on my neck was common in older women, that my thinning hair was related to aging (and bad genes), and that the broken blood vessels on my arms and legs were...you guessed it: common in aging skin. Honestly, I don't much care about any of these things. I'd rather not go bald, of course, but I don't feel even a little bit concerned about the fact that I look my age. What I am extraordinarily irritated about is that as a result of being middle aged, I'm suddenly invisible.
Okay, I'm exaggerating. I'm not invisible to everyone--just to every stranger between the ages of 13 and 25. When I was I Europe this summer, young people walked into me on the street all the time. They might seem to be looking right at me, and then they'd practically knock me to the curb. It got so bad in Scandinavia that I started chanting "I AM MOT invisible, and I cannot be walked through." Now it happens at school at the time. I'll be walking down the hall, and people plow right into me. Alas, while invisibility might be the plight of the middle aged woman, it has not rendered me silent. Beware, youngsters. If I see you in some hallway and our eyes meet, and still you run into me, I'll give you an earful--even if I can't give you an eyeful.
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