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It's Your Age

I don't feel 38 years old.  I imagine myself to be much younger, even though all the evidence points in the opposite direction.  During my routine contact lens check-up today my optician noticed a few extra vessels in my eyes, partly due to continuous wear but also because of "my age" *runs away, screaming*.  Oh, I also had to walk round town after the appointment looking a right twat with yellow-rimmed eyes because I'd had to have some weird dye inserted into my eyes.  And they'd ended up stinging.  And watering.  A lot!  So maybe some of the sympathetic glances aren't to do with my age, after all.


I'm at that time of my life where I am the age I remember my parents being.  They were this age when I was sixteen years old and leaving school.  My parents were always just "mum and dad"; they were the adults.  Old.  I wonder if they felt the same way I do now?  Reflective... realising that when I stay out until three or four in the morning that I probably look a bit like someone trying to recapture their youth.  And I suppose I am in a way.

Do other people look at me and think, "Oh yeah, she's knocking forty"?  I actually HATE that "When I get old I'll wear purple" poem - mostly because I do all of that already (spit, hoard pencils, collect samples) - my Dr Martens ARE purple, for gods sake!!  I get paranoid when I tell people that I'm a grandparent already because I imagine they're working out in their heads how old both myself and my daughter were when we had our children (eighteen and seventeen respectively, just so you know...).

The self-doubt is creeping in too.  I thought I'd battled those demons when I role-swapped with my husband and went back to work full time.  But I always think about the "what if's" and the "maybe's"... not that I want to alter any of my life, no - but doesn't everyone wonder how different it would have been if they'd have taken the other "fork in the road"?

I also look at my husband (who I love, unconditionally) and don't see a 43 year old man.  I see the person I fell in love with over twenty years ago.  Yet when I think about it, I get a bit shocked that I am actually married to a middle-aged man (sorry Kev).  How the frig did that happen?  Me... married... for almost twenty years!!  Does he feel the same about me?  Sometimes, I don't think so *shrugs*

They (who's "they"?) say you're as old as you feel.  Well in my mind, I'm still in my early twenties - possibly because I never "lived" them because I was busy having babies and running a house.  I like to think I am living my life backwards and maybe all this "finding myself" as a writer and studying for my degree is making me think a bit deeper - and I'm not sure that's a good thing.  Should I go back to being shallow and non-committal?  I did all the serious stuff back then - now it's time to be silly!

And yes, I know there's far too many "speech marks" in this post...
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