I’m 70. I’m no longer 22. Acne notwithstanding, I don’t look like I’m 22. Since then, I’ve put myself through college. I’ve put myself through law school. I’ve had a lifetime full of experiences. I’m not the person I was at 22 and don’t want to be that person.
So what’s the problem? The problem is what I think people expect. I watch TV and see anorexic women. I have to tell myself these women have eating disorders. They aren’t at a healthy weight. What they are doing to their bodies is going to catch up to them.
I watch TV and see women who have obvious facelifts that they deny having. Their faces will again fall. I see women who have had way too many facelifts and they look terrible. I see women who have obvious breast implants and lifts. I see Jamie Lee Curtis wearing a low cut dress, and her breasts jiggle just like mine. I see her gray hair and wonder why I am not that confident.
I was 25 when I started college and 30 when I graduated with degrees in biology and journalism. I started law school on my 38th birthday. I appeared before the US Supreme Court when I was 44. I moved 2000 miles across the country while Jim stayed behind to sell the house when I was 47. I argued the first of three times before the NM Supreme Court when I was 50. When I was 54, I began a nine-year fight to keep a job I loved. I retired when I was 63.
It took me a lifetime to achieve what I’ve achieved. Now, I look at my face in the mirror, and new lines form each day. I have lines across my forehead. I have weird lines going from my nose to my chin. I’ve considered botox, but I think I’d be even more upset when the lines come back – and they will come back – than I am now that they are arriving.
I’ve watched myself go through life changes. I was 38 when I realized my life is mine and no one else should run my life. When I was 39, I realized I could learn anything I wanted and my life was incredible. When I was 50, I went a little crazy and got my bellybutton pierced. When I was 60, I spent the next few years realizing my life is finite and worrying I wouldn’t get everything done that I wanted to get done before I died. I was 60 when a client told me I’m a kind woman. I had never thought of myself as kind. When I was 61, someone who is much younger than me found me sexually attractive. I turned 70 and suddenly, I can do anything, learn anything, achieve anything. It’s like how I felt when I was 40. A few weeks ago, I realized I’m almost finished writing the novel I started writing 8 years ago. I also realized that if the entire story can be told in 44,000 words, I would be foolish to try to turn a fast paced interesting story into an 80,000 word boring story.
It has taken me a long time for my hair to go gray. It’s still not gray, but there are more gray hairs than there used to be. Once, when I was about 53 and after dying my hair flaming red, someone told me that color was much better than the color I had before. The color I had before was my natural color. I decided if people wanted to think I dyed my hair, I’d dye my hair a color that doesn’t exist in nature. I’ve been a woman with flaming red hair ever since. Now, I dye my hair because I’m upset at the few but ever increasing number of gray hairs I see.
My face reflects my life. It has been a good life and I achieved more than I ever imagined I could achieve when I was 22. So why am I so upset about the lines on my face? Why do I think I’m no longer attractive just because I’m developing lines on my forehead?
What does it mean to be attractive? Is carrying my life on my face attractive? Interesting maybe, but I don’t know if I’m attractive.
Why the hell do I think lines on my face, gray hairs, and not being anorexic matter?
There’s a quilt in here somewhere and fuzzy ideas are forming in my brain.
Deb's Art 