As I grow closer to my death, I’m startled by this realization.

As of the moment of writing this, knock on wood, I’m grateful to be in mostly good health for someone my age, middle-aged, or “as old as the moon” age, according to my preschooler. I’m at the halfway mark of an average lifespan. It’s not what I expected. And I’m often filled with fear and contempt, regret and hope, as I buck against societal standards and internally panic over the limits of my biology.

I’ve realized that no matter how old I am, I basically feel the same on the inside.

Over the past year, I’ve thought about the passing of time more than I ever have before. Not because I feel like this is the end at the ripe old age of forty-two, but rather because I don’t. Despite popular opinion, and what I always thought growing up, is that your bones don’t turn to dust the second the clock strikes on your fortieth birthday and you don’t suddenly accept your lot in life, either. I didn’t turn forty and go “Well that’s over, now I’ll just stare longingly out the window for the next few decades, reminiscing on the good ole days.”

These are still good days. At fifty they will also be good days. And sixty, seventy, and eighty, if the Gods see fit that I live that long. I have big hopes and dreams. I am still working to become the person I want to be, every day, even now. I’m realizing that it will never change because it is who I am at my core.

The thing that has shocked me the most lately about aging is how “old” I don’t feel. My dreams haven’t died. My zest for life, learning, and fun hasn’t withered. Honestly, whether or not my body agrees, in my mind, I still feel twenty-five. And I’m convinced that we all perpetually feel twenty-five, forever. It’s a more refined twenty-five, one that has time to stew in the consequences of my dumb actions. I would not currently hook up with the coked-out bartender I did when I was in my mid-twenties, and I would not surround myself with toxic assholes simply because they were “funny” like I did for a time. But I have all of the passion for life and gumption that I did back then. I will not age out of it. I will not roll over and be quiet or lie down and fade away. I am fire. And passion. And curiosity. And fun. And I will be that until the darkness claims me (hopefully in bed, at around one hundred, surrounded by my old ass friends and cocktails).

The only way I can describe life as I currently know it is that it feels like a river stone. The edges have smoothed out, but it’s still a fucking rock. Time has not turned the pebble of life into a diamond or coal. And what I mean by that is this: Life at forty-two is better in some ways but it’s still imperfect, confusing, messy, scary, and exciting. I have not peaked nor have I bottomed out. The only thing that really separates my life now from my life at twenty-five, is I have less fucks to give and a little bit more money in savings, too. I did not expect this.

This brings me to something else I’ve thought about a lot lately: years do not equal wisdom, and a lack of years does not equal stupidity.

Years do not equal wisdom, and a lack of years does not equal stupidity

As an elder millennial, I’ve spent so much time on Tiktok and Instagram watching the hilarious battle play out between Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z. Most, if not all, of the shit we’re all slinging at each other is drenched in agism cloaked in humor. And to be fair, it’s funny. I often laugh out loud. But it is agist. It’s like every generation is trying to make themselves feel relevant in a world that tells us that we’re not good enough at any decade.

In our twenties, we’re “dumb” and “vapid” and we “talk funny” and we “lack experience.” In our thirties, we should have it all figured out but are now boring and culturally irrelevant. And by fifty, we’re basically a bone bag taking up oxygen better spent on the youths. Everyone loves to put down the way that Gen Z talks, dresses, and operates in the world as if writing off every young person as tedious elevates the older decades somehow. Gen X is “old” “not woke” and “out of touch.” Millennials are like that middle child who is not old enough to be seen as completely useless, afterall, we grew up with social media and we created digital careers, social media influencers, and bloggers. Millenials have seen nothing but war, inflation, global warming, and plague, so we’re every bit as jaded as Gen Z. But we’re not quite as progressive, cool, or self-actualized, either. Nobody can call a spade a spade faster than a Gen Zer. But Gen Z is also quick to write off anyone over twenty-two as a useless pile of shit. It’s frustrating to watch. I have friends who are in their twenties and who are seventy. I have been twenty, thirty, and now forty. Age does not bring wisdom, or indicate a lack of it. And that’s something I’d wish I’d known a lot earlier.

It’s not the passing of time that shapes us, it’s what we do with our time that does.

ME

Anyone who has worked at a restaurant knows that age doesn’t equal emotional intelligence or intelligence in general. I cannot count how many times a middle-aged woman screamed at twenty-two-year-old me for not being fast enough to refill their seventeenth diet Coke. Nobody is more excited to scream at the waitstaff at Chilis than someone who feels powerless in their lives.

Growing up, I remember having so many friends who were brilliant and wise beyond their years. They were joyful, witty, and self-aware. I had friends at twenty-one who were so far ahead of their time because they had great parents who modeled emotional intelligence and taught critical thinking skills, or on the other side, their lives were very difficult and they had to fight tooth and nail to survive at an early age. My grandfather, on the other hand, still struggled to emotionally regulate at eighty.

We are fed a lie

The older I get, the more I’m around “high functioning people,” the more I’ve realized I’ve been lied to. I am convinced that absolutely nobody has their shit together, ever, until they die. We are told that by thirty we will know all the things, and have it all sorted. It’s certainly not true for me or anyone else I know. In fact, life only seems to get messier as time passes, more nuanced, and for a lot of people who choose to have children, the stakes just get higher. And the worst thing about the lie that at some point we’ll reach a pinnacle of wisdom and stability is the way we internalize it, the way we’re made me feel silly for stepping out of line.

We tell twenty-five-year-olds that their ideas are stupid and they can’t change anything. We tell forty-year-olds that they can’t look pretty and go dancing anymore because being attractive or having fun is only for young people in America. By adopting these strict views of age and what we “should” be or do with every passing decade, we’re putting ourselves in horrible little boxes and cutting ourselves off at the knee. The lie forces us to discredit young people, to look down on their experiences, thoughts, feelings, and passions, while also actively discouraging lifelong growth, change, and flexibility. Because if your life is over by thirty, if you’re “supposed” to know everything by middle age there’s no point in adapting or growing or hoping or dreaming.

The only thing we learn with age for certain is how to fake it until we make it. What being older or being a parent forces you to do, more than anything, is pretend like you know what you’re doing because you’re “supposed” to know and are shamed for not knowing.

When you’re twenty, you can be messy, when you’re fifty, if you’re imperfect, you’re a failure.

My solution to all of this is to throw it all out of the window, burn these expectations to the ground, and reinvent what aging looks like for me. As a joke with a friend, I said that I was no longer going to even talk about age, mine or anyone else’s who is an adult. After twenty-one, we’re just ageless. I was kidding. And yet, I think there might be something to it.

A few weeks ago, I was driving to a bookstore with one of my friends. I met her through her fiance, who works with my husband. We had dinner with them one night and she and I clicked over the ACOTAR series, a fantasy book series, that we’re both obsessed with and we’ve been friends for a few years. Anyhow, I didn’t ask her age then and we haven’t talked about it since. So we’re driving to the bookstore and I said something about feeling old that day because my neck hurt from, ya know, breathing, and she said “You’re not old! You’re like a year older than me, right?” And I realized right then that I had no idea how old she was. I said, “I don’t know. How old are you?” And she said “twenty-eight.” I laughed and said, “Oh, Gods, no, I guess I’m way older than you.” She asked my age and when I told her, can I just tell you the look on her face was PRICELESS. Her pretty brown eyes went wide and she stared at me for a second, like searching my face for the lie. Finally, she said, “Well, you look the same age as me.” I thanked her and we laughed about it. And I realized in that moment, that if we had known each other’s ages right up front, would we have become really good friends like we are now? I’d like to think so, but who knows.

We share our age with people with the assumption that we’ll understand everything that there is to know about them with this information. But what if, we just get to know people as people without preconceived notions? What if we live a life that feels authentic to us, as long as it’s legal and doesn’t hurt anyone, without the “shoulds” of cultural expectations? What if we made space for growth, connection, curiosity, failure, and change, at every age?

For example, I have zero interest in abandoning my dreams because I’m “too old” for them. I was a late bloomer in a lot of ways. I grew up in chaos with a lot of abuse and neglect and spent much of my twenties in survival mode trying to figure out what I wanted and who I wanted to be. I didn’t figure that out until my thirties. Right now is the first time in my life. I feel like I have the tools that I need to focus on actually living my life instead of just trying to stay alive.

I love to travel, love culture, love dancing, and clothing. I’m not going to dress in paper bags because I’m “old.” Like any parent, I’m going to live in sweatpants, but it will be a cool matching sweatsuit set with nikes because I am forty and covered in sticky preschooler handprints but I am not dead. I like K-pop. Like a lot. Imagine the drama of a drag show, mixed with race cars, men and women who look ethereal, and synchronized dancing. It’s an ADHD fever dream. I want to travel with friends. I want to occasionally have friend sleepovers where we lay in bed and talk while watching a throwback 90’s film. I want to try new things, all the time, forever. Of course, I am a mom, and I have a dog and now a gecko (thanks Santa) and I have a career that I have to show up for responsibly every single day. Being a parent is the biggest joy of my life and the thing I take the most seriously. But I am a three-dimensional whole human with things I want for myself, too, and those things don’t need to be dismissed or bogged down because of my birth year.

So here’s to another year around the sun, another decade of curiosity and chaos. I can’t wait to see what this decade brings.