It’s a well-known fact amongst my people that when there is a camera pointed at me, I cannot make a normal human face. I am afflicted with The Chandler Syndrome, and the struggle is real. For the last year or so, I’ve been trying to work on becoming more comfortable being in front of the lens, which has involved a lot of selfies and a lot of people taking photos of me with largely unpleasant results.
For every passable shot, there are a kajillion terrible ones, and, as I parse through them looking for Just One Damn Photo of Me Smiling Normally, I occasionally look at my image and wonder, “just who the hell is this middle-aged person?“
I see pores and wrinkles and crow’s feet, and I instinctively shrink inside, suddenly ashamed of my body’s inevitable betrayal. Everyday tasks I have taken for granted for my entire life – riding motorcycles, opening jars, bending, lying down, standing up, coughing, rolling over – are now riddled with anything from mild discomfort to intense pain depending upon the day, the weather, what I did the day before, and so on.
I’ve said this one thousand times and I’ll say it again: Aging is not for the cowardly.
Until just a few short years ago, I was desperate to conceal my age. Most of my staff and co-workers were 10 to 20+ years younger than I was, and I felt the weight of my years, man – super keenly. Then, I saw an interview with Dana Delany in which she proudly proclaimed she was sixty damn years old and she is still, of course, smokin’ hot.
Well, heck: What if all women just owned their stage of life and acted as if there were nothing to be ashamed of with a few wrinkles and bumps? Huh. Fancy that. Redefine beauty and so on. Yes, I am late to this particular party: It’s almost as if a whole heaping bunch of women have realized this before I did and paved the way (thanks, beautiful humans.)
I took a long, hard look at the photo above (as well as some others.) I settled in and tried to get comfortable with the texture of my no-longer-dolphin-smooth skin.
I took in the totality of how my life experience has mapped itself into my flesh.
I am no longer in the spring of my years, no ma’am; it is wayyyyy summer up in here, my friends. In each line of the creases around my eyes, the tracks of a thousand tears, the echoes of a million open-hearted laughs.
My body is weathered and no longer new, but it has seen some shit, man. I’ve abused and neglected everything about myself, but we keep slogging forward. I have earned every motherfucking one of these lines, every strand of silver hair.
Someone close to me recently said I have resilience. Indeed, that’s true, and I have the scars – large and small, some visible on my body and some only visible in my eyes – evidence of past wounds and of persevering through them all. I suppose a little wear and tear, a little material fatigue, is to be expected.
In those wrinkles, there are tough life decisions, seemingly impossible hurdles. Decisions made for better or for worse. Shame and hurt and anger and forgiveness. Dare I say it, even strength.
Every day, I hold this motto in mind:
Damn skippy. Persevere, because the alternative is misery. Loss of self.
So yes – my face is more weathered road map than uncharted territory these days. Like the much-worn helmet in the top photo, there are scratches and dents and dirt and chips.
More than a trillion moments have led up to this one (48 years = 1,513,728,000 seconds, incidentally,) and, with any luck, I’ll have more than a trillion more before this old carcass finally breathes its last.
Between now and then, wow – mysteries yet to unfold. What I do know is that I’ll take it head-on. Adventure in all forms, courage in execution. Courage, of course, not being a lack of fear but acting in spite of fear, sometimes nearly debilitating fear. Deciding to no longer be prisoner of cages that physically vanished years ago. Bursting out of soul-crushing, self-imposed darkness.
Letting go of thoughts and behaviors that no longer serve who I am or who I want to be.
“Who I want to be,” of course, being the never-ending quest.