A Certain Age

June 5th, 2017

 

A Certain Age

I am a woman of a ‘Certain Age‘; that much I am now willing to admit. It is a pleasantly vague description for someone of indeterminate years, but I fear that even then I am flattering myself and that it is no longer how others see me. However, that I am no longer ‘young’ is self-evident, even to my deluded subconscious. How should I now see myself?

Many years ago I made a conscious decision to op-out of ‘Middle-Age’ and I still think it was an excellent idea; I just carried on doing what I had always done, without a backward glance and not a forward one either. To me the concept of ‘Middle-Age’ is the embodiment of Boring, spelt with a capital B; to stop regarding yourself as young, to stop doing fun things, to slow down, get fat and think you are ‘past it’; all that is as far from my philosophy as it is possible to get. But it’s the first three words of this paragraph that make me a bit nervous.

If I ever analysed the label ‘of a Certain Age’, I would see it used to describe a woman who was in, perhaps, her mid-fifties; past Middle Age, but not yet Old. I now have a nasty suspicion that many other people would now look at me and put me into the latter category, that is if they even actually notice me. What is sad is that I do not feel myself that way at all.

From Images© by VM. Shared with the author’s permission.

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