Next Month I Will Turn 40

On getting older in a weird world

Next month I will turn 40 and for the past year I have been saying ‘I don’t know how I feel about that but I guess I have a year 9 months 6 months 3 months  2 months to figure it out.’

Except, next month I will turn 40 and I still don’t know how I feel or what it means or if it means anything at all.

Photo by Tolga Ulkan on Unsplash

Next month I will turn 40 and mid-January in the Midwest is always frigid and snowy and wet and dark and everyone truly is broke after Christmas so celebrations are almost always a let down. In spite of the fact that winter can be so beautiful and magical, can be a chance to take a breath, a sign from the universe to sleep late, take naps, rest in a world that wants us to squeeze productivity out of every nanosecond, most people don’t see it that way. People see January as the ‘worst month’ and I really truly believe that if if we allowed everyone to nest through the winter everyone wouldn’t hate my birth month so much, but we don’t and they do and so everyone hates life on my birthday and obviously I don’t take that personally but also obviously I also do.

Next month I will turn 40 and it’s weird because I had no problem turning 30, actually. I didn’t mind the expectations of a spouse and a house and a baby because I’d come out a few years before and everyone knew being queer meant opting out of those stupid expectations. I was thrilled to turn 30, actually. Fuck my 20s, they were the. worst. I was excited to be moving on, to give fewer fucks, to maybe get some respect. To start building a more stable life than I had then. And stable I have accomplished, which I acknowledge is quite a feat, but next month I will turn 40 and while I’m happy to be giving fewer fucks as the years go by, I’m supposed to feel differently about this one, right?

Next month I will turn 40 and it’s weird because I remember my mother turning 40. Like, vividly. I was twelve years old. I was in the sixth grade. I was a real person already, all the ingredients of who I was and am and will be all thrown into the mixing bowl on low. My dad threw my mom a big surprise party (something he had never done before and has never done since) and I sat on the blue couch in our living room while her friends and sisters all told jokes about her being Over The Hill. Her life was statistically half over and everything good was, apparently, behind her and it made sense to me, in sixth grade, that my mother was old. Of course she was. But now I am about to turn 40 and I’m not old, I don’t feel old (and also I do) and maybe my life is half over but I don’t feel like everything good is behind me, but also the future has never looked so utterly bleak and anyway how would I know if the good part of my life is over since I’m still in the middle of it?

Next month I turn 40 and it’s weird because I do not look my age. I mean, I have always looked super young. I played prepubescent children at the community theater until the day I left for college and then in college people always thought I meant ‘sophomore in high school’ until I corrected them. Once at a teacher professional development day — as in I was employed full time as a certified teacher — I had an admin stop me coming back from the rest room to scream at me for being out of uniform. I was twenty-six years old and she thought I was a student at her school.

I’ve always hated looking young because no one ever took me seriously. Not that I think anyone ever takes any woman seriously but they took me even less seriously than others. And yet every single time I complained about it, a woman would tell me just wait, a day will come when you’ll be glad and I would hate that woman. Loathe her. But now, maybe that day has arrived? Maybe I am glad to look young now? Which only makes me feel older than ever because that day always seemed like it would only come when I was ancient and so does it follow that I’m ancient now?

Photo by Joey Kyber on Unsplash

Next month I turn 40 and it’s weird because I really don’t know how I feel about not looking my age and what does that even mean anyway? Okay, fine, I know that it mostly means I don’t have lines around my eyes, but those lines are beautiful and they tell stories and I really don’t think we should hate them or discourage them or shit on women for having them especially when men can look as old as they want and they’re still ruggedly sexy or whatever. I think those lines aren’t a big deal but also I don’t have them and I don’t have people commenting on them so it’s easy for me to say that from way over here with my unlined face.

And maybe it’s okay that I won this particular genetic lottery since I lost pretty much every other one, but would I be so adamant about the stupidity of anti-aging products if I felt like I needed them? I don’t know. I do know that I’m sick of STILL not ever being taken seriously. And you know what? I’ve earned my ma’am, actually, I’ve lived a fucking life. But also, if the world doesn’t call me old, doesn’t treat me like I’m old, maybe that means I’m not old and even though I don’t think being old is bad I don’t think I’m ready to be old just yet. 

Next month I turn 40 and it turns out life isn’t a movie you can rewind. You don’t get to go back and try again, choose another path through the story, pick a different college, realize you were queer a decade sooner, and that’s such a childish realization, I know, but it’s really been hitting me hard these days. I still don’t have a spouse or a house or 2.5 kids and I’m not unhappy about any of that, per se. I like my job (mostly) and my life (mostly) and anyway, I don’t think I’m wired the same way that other people are. I’m mostly coming to peace with that, but I already know that no one will throw me a surprise birthday party.

Whatever family is, bound with vows or blood, or decisions to keep showing up, I can’t seem to hold on to it for very long, not like movies and books where people stay friends forever and make grand gestures or even just notice when something is wrong. And what if I live my whole life without these things that people think are essential to being human and I don’t think I think that but what the hell do I know? I’ve been wrong about a lot of things. What would it mean to live my whole life without making a family of my own? Would that mean that I’ve failed? Or just was brave enough to defy societal expectations? It’s a particular kind of loneliness that’s hard to describe and own because it’s not that I want my life to look different, it’s that I want the world to make more room for people whose lives look like mine.

In the end it doesn't matter how I feel about turning 40 because I will be turning 40 regardless so I guess it’s easier and healthier and happier to decide that I’m good with it all. 

Next month I turn 40 and I don’t have a book published. I don’t have an agent. Yet. I’m supposed to say yet, since I’m still trying, but maybe I missed it. Seriously. I know, I’m not supposed to say things like that, but really, truly, maybe I missed it.

Maybe I missed the heyday of YA, that moment before the pandemic burned everyone out beyond the point of no return, before AI, before the market was so over saturated, before what everyone seems to want is fluffy romances and I don’t write those, I can’t write those because I don’t understand romance and I never have. Maybe if I would have gotten my life together 10 years ago I could have books out right now, but I’ll never know and it’s not my fault because I had some shit to work through first but also if it’s not my fault then whose is it?

I know, fault is meaningless and unhelpful, and people’s expectations of timelines don’t mean anything and Toni Morrison didn’t publish her first book until she was 42, but next month I turn 40 and publishing takes forever so in the best of timelines I would almost certainly be older than that. Plus, you know, I’m not Toni Morrison. And maybe I’m supposed to say that I write just for me and it doesn’t matter what other people think, but it’s not true, okay? I play cello for me. I knit for me. I read for me. I write because I have shit to say but does that even matter if nobody’s listening? If nobody hears? If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there, maybe the tree matters but did the sound of it falling? And what does it mean if it doesn’t matter? What is the point of anything, you know?

Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash

Next month I turn 40 and I feel like there was one sparkling, precious moment when I was seventeen when I knew exactly who I was, consuming books, I mean devouring them, twelve course meals one after another, searching for answers to questions she had no words for, searching, striving to be anywhere else, anywhen, anywho else because maybe then she wouldn’t be alone. That girl knew just enough about the world – that it wasn’t fair, that it wasn’t kind – to be realistic but not so much that it stopped her from having dreams. That girl who grounded herself each day in music, notes on the page that weren’t words exactly but feelings and promises downloaded directly through her to anyone listening.

That girl who didn’t suffer fools, didn’t know how often and how completely that trait  would bite her in the ass throughout the years as the world demanded again and again that she play their bullshit game of false smiles and flattery and she refused. That girl who was ready to face the future alone and didn’t feel lesser for it. College beat that girl down until there was nothing left until she didn’t know who she was and all the years since have been one long search to find my way back. To be again the girl who closes one book and opens another and has thoughts – gods, so many thoughts – about everything and, fine, most people don’t care but some do and maybe that is enough. To be again the girl who draws a bow across a string and feels like her feet touch the earth again, like she isn’t floating in a sea of horrible things, she’s here now in this place and this time and this body. It’s a process.

In the end it doesn't matter how I feel about turning 40 because I will be turning 40 regardless so it’s easier and healthier and happier to decide that I’m good with it, I guess. 

And I think I am good with it. I think.  If I can make the second half of my life what I want it to be. If I can continue this journey to being the most me that I can, whoever that is now, whoever that will be, I think I’m not unhappy to move through this particular birthday. I think.

Next month I will turn 40. 

Ready or not, here I come.