Almost 40
Everyone keeps reminding me to trust the timing of my life, but I think that’s the hardest thing for anyone to do. I sit in a place between analyzing want and need, where timing is a factor and so is personal honesty. You know, the type of honesty only you know because it’s branded on your heart like a tramp stamp on a 21 year olds lower back. Sometimes the truth feels like a mistake, but you know it’s who you are and if you hold back - well - that pain of not doing what you wanted might one day actually be worse. So, you’ve marked yourself for life. Admired and admonished in private, you look at yourself equal parts embarrassed and proud. It’s you. It’s you, completely naked. Naked, that word alone makes me shift in discomfort. All I have to do is hear the word naked and I lose myself in my mind, even after all these years.
An honest heart is beautiful and embarrassing, yes, like a tramp stamp.
Clearly I’m writing this from personal experience. That first paragraph was written as I literally sat naked and kneeling on my bedroom floor, crouched with my back towards a full length mirror. And right now I’m looking over my left shoulder, my gaze identifying my actual tramp stamp, moving down to my buttocks - pocketed with cellulite and stretch marks - and scanning upward to a 360 scar around my back and breasts. My war scars. Twenty five thousand dollars in implants and plastic surgery paid off before college loans. I hope mom and dad are proud.
I’m nearly 40 and in woman time this means just about too old to bear children and too young to believe the possibility is gone forever. But when you’re me and you suffer from an indifference about children and you’ve never been in love - romantic love or made love to anyone - you start to wonder about your place in womanhood. Maybe that’s just me? Or maybe it’s a lot of women and not enough of us admit to feeling old, only ever fucked and a little beat up by our stories? Years ago I told my therapist that I knew I was special and, in spite of my confusion, despair, dances with depression and equal zest for life as it appears quite honestly on social media - because I wasn’t faking those moments like I had in other “romantic moments” - I still think I’m special. Special like a dog with 3 legs or a child with 6 fingers on one hand. I’m a different breed of woman, I’ve always known that to be true because I never quite fit in despite my best efforts. When I was 10 I used to rap Wu-Tang Clan in an opera voice to my brother, he’d bribe me to keep singing and I conceded so long as a long, slow dance with a Drake's Apple Pie was on the table. That’s right, at 10 I worked for processed foods. By age 16 I worked at C-Town supermarket and on my off days I memorized the supermarket's circular sale prices, quizzing myself as I sat alone in my bedroom eating bologna sandwiches. This was before the days of scanners. Teens working in supermarkets right now really do not know how good they have it. As I progressed in my teens, I kept a diary filled with writing, not a note about marriage, boyfriends or having a child. Most pages were almost always about discovery, travel, what it would feel like to know love. On each page, the chocolate residue from Little Debbie Nutty Bars, some mayonaise, and a few tears - the unholy trinity of my teens.
Unique onto myself and special, yet still uncertain how so. I’m almost 40.
Perhaps, together, we’ll find out if I’m special? I still have a penchant for memorizing weekly pharmacy and grocery sale circulars, maybe that’s my gift to share with the world? “Hey, world, The 8 pack of Bounty Paper Towel is $5.99 this week at CVS - go out this week and score yourself a sale!”