Maybe Getting Older Doesn’t Have to be So Spooky
Down bad for Fiona Goode; FX Network
It’s that time of year again. I feel like these days I blink and I’m once again blowing out the candles on a cupcake and asking my friends to take one really good picture of me in my special little outfit so I can post it to Instagram and prove to everyone that I’m still cooler and hotter than ever.
Each year around the sun, I find my relationship with my birthday grows more complicated. When I was little, I cherished my spring birthdays. My birthday meant that summer was just around the corner and things were changing for the better. In my late teens and early twenties, my birthdays were blurry and vodka-soaked. And then Covid happened, and just like that, my twenties screeched to a halt and stayed there for two years. Despite life on Earth coming to a virtual standstill, we still maintained our orbit in the universe, and time continued ticking.
By now the world has moved on, but I’m still here. “It’s not fair,” I whine to my girlfriends during yet another rant about Covid aging. Twenty-seven but twenty-five in Covid years. None of us can believe it. “We’ve been robbed!” my best friend echoes. We sulk together, living in the in-between. Better than before, but not yet our best.
It’s no secret that our obsession with anti-aging is rubbing off on little girls and warping their very malleable brains. We are now in an era where little girls are ransacking Sephora to buy more ingredients to fuel their skincare routines. They mimic the big girls they see on their TikTok feeds who drizzle $70 serums on their faces before bed and apply retinoids religiously. It’s easy for us to judge their mothers standing in line at the Sephora checkout, beholden to the whims of their little princesses. But we should remember that they too are likely victims of the anti-aging epidemic. By now, they are probably no stranger to lasers and needles. “Beauty is pain.” A lesson they learned from their mothers, who learned it from their mothers, who learned it from their mothers.
My weariness of growing older is more than skin-deep. It’s still a concern, though, as I scrunch my face in the bathroom mirror worried about hormonal acne and, now, wrinkles. I’m sure I’ll faint the day I discover my first gray hair.
The complications of this age are aplenty as I watch friends get promoted, engaged, and start their own businesses. I dread opening LinkedIn sometimes. Or Facebook. Last engagement season (September - December) my girlfriends counted 31 engagements among our sorority sisters, high school peers, and other mutual friends. Brutal. But I suppose it’s not love or #girlbossing that I’m after so much as clarity and stability.
I was talking to another friend about aging, and he said something that stuck with me: “I mean, do we really want to be twenty-two again?”
No. (See above)
Despite entering into an era of adulthood that forbids calling my mother crying whenever I have an unexpected expense like a broken car part or a medical bill, I am very much happy to have exited my early twenties. I no longer yearn to press the ‘panic’ button with every breakup, career failure, or really bad hangover. I’ve actually gotten good at avoiding really bad hangovers these days, as I have mastered the art of an Irish exit before we make it to the 12 am tequila shots. I no longer cyberstalk my exes. Or really anyone beyond the occasional internet crush. Pierce Abernathy. I no longer fill my life with temporary friendships. It’s been a quality-over-quantity era filled with deep love and deep laughs.
Maybe it isn’t aging so much as evolving.
Why are we so scared of getting older? I know the answer is obvious. Because with each cupcake candle, we are subject to even more societal scrutiny than the year before. As our youth dissipates, our internalized pressure to find meaning and purpose grows—to find love, success, or inner peace. And despite the serums, lotions, and lasers, no matter what we do, wrinkles will eventually emerge on our faces, indicative of the weathering. Moreover, indicative of the evolution.
It’s so corny, but aging is a blessing. Despite the weeks that feel monotonous or life’s unevents, maybe at the end of it all, instead of fear, we feel gratitude. We get to continue on and have yet another year to absorb, grow, and evolve.
I hope to never be finished evolving.
For now, I’ll meticulously plot my special little outfit. Don’t forget to like and comment.
