I legitimately enjoy getting older. Always have. Since I was a kid I’ve done that whole ‘I’m seven and three-quarters!’ thing, where you want everyone to know you’re not just seven. You’ve got a whole ‘nother eight months of life experience and you will NOT be lumped in with those youthful idiots behind you.
When people say to me, ‘Oh you look so much younger than forty!’ I know it’s a compliment. But I’ve never enjoyed being called younger. And I know exactly where this particular pathology springs from.
I was managing a team of staff in my early 20s. And I was constantly being underestimated by customers. No way this 21-year-old girl is the boss here, they’d say. Particularly wankerish (read: old white) men would ask me for the manager when they’d perceived some slight had been committed against them. And I’d happily tell them, ‘I am the manager, bud, so you can take it or leave it.’
Cue: Shock and disbelief. It was maddening. I craved the credibility and authority I saw being given to my older (and let’s be honest, less female) colleagues.
The desire to be older also, almost certainly, has something to do with feeling powerless as a child; subject to the unstable whims of my mother and the regular upheavals I experienced. When I’m big enough, no one can tell me where to live or when to leave, I thought.
To me, ageing has always symbolised a shield against underestimation. It promised better job promotions and due recognition for my efforts. Being taken more seriously. Having greater agency over my destiny and a sense of self-determination.
The yearning to be perceived as older is deeply woven into the double-denim fabric of my ego, even today.
Middle-Age? Hah! Let’s Climb a Fucking Mountain!
I know a lot of people are inclined to have a bit of an identity crisis when approaching forty. They cling to thirty-nine for as long as possible and experience something approaching full-blown existential hysteria before the big day. Then white-knuckle the celebrations with a bottle of tequila and a painted-on grin before retiring to sob quietly in the toilets. Standard.
Me? I was thoroughly looking forward to this birthday. Hell, if I thought thirty was good (and I did), then this new decade was going to mean whole new stratospheres of greatness! And to do the event justice meant marking the occasion with something I could have only dreamed about ten years ago.
So, instead of a dinner party or a big night out, I spent the week surrounding my fortieth birthday climbing an actual mountain in the Himalayas. [pause for applause]
Now, don’t be fooled — I’m no Fitness Person (my affectionate term for anyone involved in physical pursuits, be they runners, yogis, or just folks who enjoy chia seeds and talk about counting their macros while sporting an Apple Watch). Climbing stairs makes me sweaty, and being sweaty makes me angry. But as much as I shun feats of physical endurance, I wanted to prove to myself — and perhaps to the ghost of my youth — that turning forty didn't mean slowing down.
Scaling the 13,000-foot beast over six days, in the middle of winter, was as gruelling as you’d expect, but the breathtaking vistas (almost) compensated for the torment. Marvelous views? Check. Thrilling adventure? Check. The whole exhilarating ordeal? Absolutely worth a yarn (which I’ll be sure to write about in greater detail soon).
Then: I couldn’t walk for three days after descending some 11,000 feet in a single day.
My knees swelled to the size of cantaloupes. My toes protested in outrage. My hips made several anonymous phone calls to the Fair Work ombudsman to discuss their options. And the less said about the treachery of my glutes, the better.
Turns Out, Forty Fucking Hurts and Everything Falls Apart
Alright, so I wasn’t at risk of a mid-life identity crisis, that much was clear. But what I wasn’t expecting was for my body to immediately hit some kind of use-by date, after which bits start rusting. Like planned obsolescence in our gadgets, it’s as though my body is no longer supported with software upgrades or replacements for my just-outside-of-warranty parts.
Since the trek, the wheels have, if not ‘come off’ exactly, then definitely begun to wiggle a little. My right hip hurts after sitting on the couch for more than ten minutes. Getting up most mornings, I hobble around like a Night of the Living Dead zombie; one broken ankle audibly grinding against the floorboards, left foot holding on by a few strands of sinew and a prayer. My complexion has morphed from a youthful oily sheen to the actual Sahara Desert — so dry it might dissolve into a cloud of ash should anyone dare to touch it without first donning white cotton gloves and speaking in hushed voices, the way you would when handling the Magna Carta.
And my memory. That unwelcome harbinger of doom and a one-way ticket to Alzheimer’s Town. If there was a welcome wagon and a gift basket of denture-friendly candies to soften the blow, that would be something. But I’d likely forget about them anyway.
What else? My hangovers have always been horrendous, but since hitting the big four-oh, they’re a two-to-three-day affair, replete with cranium-shattering headaches, radical fluctuations in gastrointestinal disposition, and an all-encompassing malaise.
Almost overnight, since forty has hit, the slow decline to bedpans and babbling to myself in a threadbare armchair seems to have begun.
Then there’s the mental stuff. Even though I have always enjoyed getting older, things have begun to feel a little more tenuous, now I’m on the other side of ‘youth’. I’ve recently found myself feverishly pouring over every new peer-reviewed study on diseases in older women — it turns out, the birth control I’ve relied upon for the last twenty-three years increases my risk of a rare brain tumour ten-fold, oh joy!
I’ve caught myself inspecting previously benign-looking freckles for signs of skin cancer. I wake in the middle of the night with a gasp, wondering if, because of all those missed Pap smears, I’m surely, without a doubt, irrevocably riddled with the Big Cervical C.
I’ve begun asking questions like, ‘Do they offer at-home bowel cancer screening in the next place we’ll visit?’ and ‘How expensive is a Check For Every Age-Related Disease Ever Discovered test these days?’
When I found out they now offer free breast cancer screening to women over forty in Australia? I almost considered moving back, just for that!
It’s fair to say that the biggest shift I’ve had since turning forty is becoming a hypochondriac.
But is it really hypochondria when you’re middle-aged? Or is it a well-placed fear of the inevitable?
Who Needs a Ferrari If You’re Too Sick to Drive It?
Like many of us, I have always taken my health for granted. I mean, rightly so, in some ways. No one should spend their teens and twenties worried about whether they might be a candidate for heart disease and early-onset dementia. Your youth is for being carefree, after all. And if you’re lucky enough to be blessed with good health and an absence of life-limiting illnesses, you should be making merry while you can.
But in a way, I do wish that I’d been a bit more of a [shudder] Fitness Person, at least in the sense that I was in any way interested in my body (rather than my weight) and how to ensure its vitality into old age.
I watched a free program on brain health and Alzheimer’s prevention by American neurologist, Dr Richard Isaacson, the other day and was introduced to the term healthspan. Now, we’re all familiar with the concept of lifespan, of course, and we’re all in agreement that enhancing it is a good thing. Thankfully, modern medicine has played a big role in increasing the average life expectancy in the developed world to 70+ — more than doubling over the last 200 years.
But, who wants to grow (very) old as a bag of curmudgeonly bones, teetering on the precipice of permanently unreliable continence, and without the wherewithal to cheat at a game of UNO let alone walk down the street unassisted?
Don’t we want to live better, as well as longer?
One of my oldest friends, Emma — a doctor herself — has had this on lock since she was studying dietetics in her 20s. I’d often find her reading a textbook while working out on a stationary bicycle in her living room. Granted, she was watching Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and drinking champagne at the same time (essential study companions when trying to digest Advanced Glyconutritional Biochemistry: Integrative Approaches in Macronutrient Metabolics, I assume). She was delightfully eccentric, to my mind. But in my recent readings, I discovered that exercising while studying is dynamite for your brain’s health. Who knew? Well, Emma did.
Before I left Australia, Emma had graduated, achieved her PhD, and begun working in research. She’s more clued up than most of us on what nutrition, exercise, and keeping the brain stimulated mean for long-term health. When working from home, she will take a run in the wee hours of the morning, come home to work, then take a lunchtime run to ‘burn off pent-up energy’, and later get on the bike before cooking a three-course, heavily whole-foods-centred, nutrient-dense meal. She’s always amazed me. If you didn’t know her, you might think all this equated to some kind of thinness-seeking compulsion, but you couldn’t be more wrong.
Aside from almost certainly living with a super-human surplus of energy, Emma’s always been interested in longevity. She doesn’t want to be Keith Richards — live forever, but look (and feel) like a walking corpse. She wants healthspan as much as she wants lifespan. She’s the only person I know who’s been talking about this since she was young enough to enjoy Nickelback unironically (to be fair, that was me). And it’s only since I hit forty that I’ve managed the kind of fervour for this that she has.
Alright, maybe not the same degree of fervour, exactly — you’re about as likely to catch me running as you are to find me aboard the International Space Station — but still, it’s something I’ve grown increasingly obsessive about.
Rather than accept my fate and that the ‘good old days’ (of being able to walk without the use of a Zimmer frame) are behind me, I am determined to, I don’t know…do something about it? Hence, I recently quit drinking, reduced my coffee intake, I’m eating MUCH healthier meals, and I endeavour to walk 5km a day, rain, shine, or smog.
Well, Bugger Me, It Works!
And whaddaya know, I feel better. I sleep sounder (a big deal for an insufferable insomniac). I stress less (a big deal for an insufferable worry wart). I have more energy, and take fewer naps (I do love a nap, but it was getting to the point I was spending more time in bed than out of it). I am excited to get up in the morning (hobbles and all) rather than being instantly struck with a thousand reasons why the day ahead is going to be an unmitigated disaster.
But one of the benefits I wasn’t expecting: Hobbies. Or at least, a new and zealous interest in finding activities that don’t involve sitting inside and watching reruns of Grand Designs.
We’re heading back to Cape Town in a few weeks, and we’ll be there indefinitely. So, rather than pouring over apartment advertisements and Airbnb listings to find the comfiest couch and best views of Table Mountain, I’ve been excitedly googling running clubs (that welcome enthusiastic-if-overweight walkers), sailing clubs, climbing clubs, and general outdoorsy associations in what is, without a doubt, the most beautiful and outdoorsy city in the world. I tell you, there are thousands of these clubs in CT — it’s a Fitness Person’s paradise.
If nothing else, this sudden onset of enthusiasm is the most promising indication that something is changing in me for the better. Hypochondria aside, middle age has lit a fire in my belly and woken something dormant if not entirely non-existent before now.
What if hitting mid-life isn’t so much about how I expect to be perceived by others, or even the horror of watching my body go rogue on me — it’s about remixing what ageing means?
For me, that seems to mean new interests and even redefining myself as some kind of fitness-adjacent person. Or at least, a person who enjoys the outdoors more than she enjoys the lounge chair. (If you’d told me that ten years ago, I would have spat my espresso martini at you.)
For you, reader, the second phase of your life could mean learning a new language, moving overseas, or taking up a later-life career change. Or knitting comical hats for chinchillas. Or growing cannabis. Or perfecting Mongolian throat singing.
Whatever floats your dinghy, I hope you realise, like I did, that middle age needn’t be a death knell of doom, but more of a sneaky wake-up call to not take your body or your brain for granted. And that maybe you should try something new — something that stirs that little pot of passion inside you.
Hell, you might even realise it before you hit forty, and wouldn’t that be something?