I'm watching the Today Show and they're talking about how women in their 60s are now the new 40s. I'm relieved. My real age is something I rarely willingly admit to anyone, but this new "acceptance" of aging might cause me to change my mind.
I have lied about my age online. I despise any online forum that requires you to publicly display your birth year - and I always type in the year 1978 when asked.
It's a lie. I don't feel guilty about doing it though. I rather doubt I will EVER feel guilty about doing it. Most often I simply choose not to disclose my age at all. It's nobody's business anyway and I rather resent online forums that try to typecast me into a specific group based on my age.
I'm 38. I was born in 1968, graduated high school in 1986, got married for the first time in 1995, married for the second time in 2004, had my first child in 2005 and will be having the second (and last) child in 13 days.
Next year, in June, 2008 I will turn 40. That's FORTY. And it scares the bananas out of me. How is it that I feel the same as I did at 18? When I hear about people who die in their forties, I think, "Damn, that is SO YOUNG!" Yet, when I was 18, I didn't think you could safely get any closer to "ancient," or death, than 40.
Back then I believed people in their 50s, 60s or more were living on seriously borrowed time. I didn't know anyone over the age of 70.
I was a late bloomer on just about everything in my life: responsibility, accountability, building confidence, being allowed to date, career, college, marriage, having a family, growing boobies, growing girly hips.
I never paid any attention to my age, or how people treated others differently based on their age, until I went back to college in my thirties - and I learned very quickly that my true age should never be revealed to other students. I was surrounded by thousands of 20-something students who rarely accepted anyone over the age of 29. Why would I choose to intentionally ostracize myself when I could actually pass myself off as one of them?
I'm a firm believer in "If you've got it, use it till you wear it out and can't get away with it anymore." That's when I'll just be that pathetic old lady who wants to look 40 years younger than she really is. But I'll be 80 by then, and I won't give a rat's ass anyway. ;-)
Here's to 40. In a year. (why rush it?)