That’s right. My age is the answer to the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. (Name the book/movie…)
When I turned 40, my optometrist informed me that my vision is going to change. Remember when your parents started holding small-lettered writing closer then further away before they could read it? Yeah. That happened to me in the last 6 months. My stepdad, who is approaching 80, roared with laughter when I told him this.
A year or so ago, I started noticing everyone wearing baggy, wide legged jeans. I laughed, remembering those terrible jeans all the skaters wore back in high school. Then I Googled JNCO to see if they were still in business, and immediately stopped laughing. Now I am seeing 90’s nostalgia everywhere. Our kids are getting into the culture just like we Gen X and Millennials got into the whole 60’s counter culture when we were teenagers. These jeans….these wide legged high waisted abominations really do nothing for most figures. They do not accentuate the varied leg shapes of the masses. They hide everything except….the glutes. I have very nice, prominent glutes, but I don’t want them framed by two extra yards of dark wash, light wash, or any wash. And because they aren’t showing any leg, who cares about the ankle right? So now everyone is wearing tube socks. TUBE SOCKS. The horror.
About a month ago I was out on the town with some girlfriends. We slipped into a speakeasy and sat down to enjoy some drinks. Two twenty-somethings were seated at a table next to us. Beautiful, dewy skin. They had that Sabrina Carpenter makeup style. Perfectly curated outfits with their tiny little purses tucked under their tiny little arms. Just stunning, lovely young women. And they spent the entire 45 minutes we were there posing in pouty faces, taking pictures together, holding the phone at different angles. Then one posed and the other took a picture, and then they switched places. And then they both sat on their phones rapidly typing, editing, probably posting.
“Look how much fun we’re having!”
But they were just….posers. Sometimes I hate being so observant. Sometimes I wish I noticed less.
I’ve formed more wrinkles in the last two years than in the ten years preceding them. If I sleep with the pillow tucked just a little bit differently than normal, I wake up with Batman neck and have to live with that for 5 – 7 business days. There are bottles of ibuprofen in every bathroom. I have to ask people to freaking speak up if they talk quietly in my left ear. Yeah. I have a bum ear. First, bifocals; next, hearing aids. Might as well get that nursing home booked.
But I realized – this year has been particularly hard. I have been unlucky in love, I have known grief, real grief, for the first time in my life. I don’t laugh as easily as I used to, and I am anxious, hypervigilant, and working hard in therapy. But I am also healthier I have ever been. I am stronger than I have ever been. I make more money than I have ever made, and I live in a dollhouse home that I would never have dreamed I could afford. And I built my little empire by myself. I hold this fort down, single-mom style, by myself. I answer to no one and I rely on no one. To be so powerful, so self-assured, so able to pursue my passions.
90’s Brindi was a frizzy-haired nerd with her nose in books, living within those stories and dreaming about who she could become. Knowing she was going to be a writer someday.
2000’s Brindi was wild, partying, up to no good. Married too young, forced into adulthood without much preparation for it. She was angsty and insecure and still finding her way.
2010s Brindi was becoming the woman she was meant to be. She got serious about her career, got diagnosed with PCOS, got on top of her health, had a baby.
2020’s Brindi shed all the dead weight of the first half of her life and stepped fully and brilliantly into the life she was going to have on her terms. She left the husband, got the promotions, built the dream. I can unironically tease my son with his own slang – bruh, cuh, goofy ah Mom. Very cringe.
So sure, I have a bunch of trauma I am ruminating about on this blog, and my life still doesn’t feel like my own and in my head I steel feel young. But when I Google all those symptoms, it turns out there’s nothing wrong with me. I’m just in my 40’s. You can take my vision and my hearing, but you will never take my no show socks and skinny jeans!
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