Aging Backwards

Today is my Significant Other’s (S.O.) birthday. It’s actually his fake birthday because apparently today’s date (February 10) is the date his father arbitrarily picked when filling out his immigration paperwork. I can tell you right now, I’d win the bet if I challenged my own father to remember all his kids’ birthdays. S.O. is 36 today (or sometime next month depending on whether you’re a stickler for paperwork). That’s not that old, I think. Still in the mid-thirties. Thirty-seven to thirty-nine starts to get a little sketchy because you have just wandered into your late-thirties. You’re suddenly late. Late for what? You’re moving along at a nice clip, enjoying life, still able to run occasionally, still able to indulge in a molten chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream every now and again; you have your 37th birthday and BAM! You’re in your late-thirties. Just thinking about being late for anything inexplicably makes my heart beat a little faster.

My S.O. spends a few minutes every day kvetching about his various ailments. I have heard, that as people age, talking about one’s aching and sore “fill-in-the-blank” takes up more and more of their day. I, however, am aging backwards. I look back at my 20s and think, Honey, you couldn’t pay me to go there again! I slept too much, ate badly, was generally lazy, that whole mind-body-connection concept was lost on me. Sorry, Oprah! People who’ve known me my whole life can attest that this is true. It is! You know it is! Those who’ve only known me since I embarked on my own little time-reversal experiment just have to trust me on this one.

The year I turned thirty was pivotal. I know…it’s not a very original age to get introspective. I may as well have bought a ticket for the Biological Clock Factory tour that runs every hour on the hour for Single Women in their 30s. But it wasn’t so much I was feeling an ache to have children (which I don’t really, not right at this second, anyway) because I still felt like a kid myself. I had a desire to do something drastic and over-the-top and slightly revolutionary. I wanted to show Nature that she did not have final say over me. That I could, in fact, bend her to my will and force her to follow my new and improved Biological Clock, the one that runs counter-clockwise.

If my life was Lifetime made-for-TV movie, the actual manner in which I accomplished this feat would be depicted in montage-format, scored to inspirational and female-centric music, probably an India.Arie song. You’d see me waking up at 6 am and slip my running shoes on, which were ready to rock-and-roll by my bed every morning. That image would fade and you’d then see me chucking packages of white pasta and Pepperidge Farm cookies into the garbage, then eating healthy salads with carefully portioned chicken breasts. The montage would end with me doing a full-fledged chin-up, eyes clenched in concentration…that’s some good TV. Cut to present day.

Supposedly, women get more confident, know what they want, become more assertive at this age. I’ll buy that, I’m sold. No need to show me the studies that prove this to be true. I know it’s true in my case and for the scores of girlfriends I have that are my age. Aging backwards for me means refusing to believe my body has to succumb to the ravages of time.

The desire to bitch-slap Nature doesn’t light a fire in my belly as much as it used to. As I make myself comfortable on the big, overstuffed couch that is my mid-thirties, I’m learning to coax Nature, more sweetly, into cooperating with me in my grand scheme, with a few chocolate covered almonds every-once-in-a-while and an occasional glass of merlot.