Posted by lil' jimi on April 20, 2003, at 5:33:29
In reply to Re: Age/appearance (long self-involved) » fayeroe, posted by leeran on April 19, 2003, at 16:27:37
> Pat,
>
> The numerical age doesn’t bother me as much as watching "things" fall apart. I'm in early menopause and I've seen such a decrease in some areas (my hearing/my eyesight) and such an increase in others (my weight/my bra size - yes, that subject again, but I have read that it can be one the hallmarks of menopause).
>
> I definitely wouldn't want to go back to being younger from an emotional sense. Not at all. I suppose I agree with you, in some ways I feel younger than 44, and after all, it is just a number. However, I’m definitely not as comfortable with it as you sound. Maybe someday . . .
>
> As an aside, I have never lied about my age. It’s just not something I would ever consider doing. My age is too tied up with what I’ve done in my life and how I got to this particular moment. I’m always fascinated with the notion of hiding one’s age (especially as I get older). I have an acquaintance who is obsessed about keeping her age a secret, to the point that she’s tried to have another driver’s license created for situations where she has to show it as her i.d.
>
> There’s no question that I’ve had my own real issues with aging the last two years but it’s been from a physiological sense, not from a concern with the actual age. I attribute most of this to perimenopause/early menopause. A hormone is a horrible thing to lose . . .
>
> Pat, if by "remember how hard it was to maintain" you mean maintaining appearance/weight and all that, then I suppose I'm still in semi-active battle mode. I used to post on a plastic surgery board and this topic was often broached:
>
> Is it harder to grow older if you’ve always considered yourself attractive OR harder to grow older if you never were particularly fond of your looks and the aging process has just accentuated what you didn’t like in the first place.
>
> I’m in the second group.
>
> I have always had low self-esteem regarding my appearance, but professionally, I felt very successful so I just held the other feelings at bay. I guess “worlds collided” when I started perimenopause/menopause. My weight went on a hormonal heyday, I left my job of seventeen years, remarried, moved to California, and one day looked in the mirror and realized I didn’t even feel good about myself professionally anymore. After doing the same work for seventeen years I had really “become my job.” People used to laugh about the fact that my initials were, coincidentally, the same as the publication I worked for.
>
> I have had plastic surgery and I feel a lot better about myself physically. Better than I have in years. Now, do I like admitting that plastic surgery helped my self-esteem? Not really, but it did - so I can't really lie to others (or myself) where this is concerned.
>
> Should I have been more positive about my internal self in order to accept my external self? Yes, probably, but a lot of this started in childhood and now, as an adult, the money for therapy went toward my physical self and now I'm trolling around the internet trying to fix the rest of what's broken (this part is tongue in cheek I hope you know!).
>
> Oh these message board postings . . . they do sound so self-absorbed (the ones I pen, not anyone else’s!). I really need to just write them and save them to my hard drive, but there's something about this "box" that invites the soul to perform an agonizingly slow striptease.
>
> In a rather odd way, fixing what was broken on the exterior has given me a little more courage to look at what needs tending to on the interior. TA DA. I had a moment of self-realization (or rationalization?) so I feel ready to tackle the day.
>
> If anyone actually had the patience to get to the bottom of this drivel known as my post, I would be curious to hear how others feel about aging/appearance and its effect (if any) on emotional well-being.
>
> Leelee, lee, lee, lee,
lee, lee,
lee,
leeran and fayeroe,
<one's on foot and one's in a little boat? (*!*)>beautifully said lee .... it helped me to read such candor .... thank you .... and our miss patticakes does have a wonderful attitude i can learn from .... but first i want to tell a story for ayuda (does every one know that "ayuda" comes from 'ayudar', spanish for "to help"?)
i loved my father-in-law and i miss him very much .... he was born and grew up in zapapta, texas, on the border south of lerado .... got his degree in agriculture, worked for u.s. aid, raised his family in mexico, central, south america and the carribean .... he was a master of many of the dialects of spanish and all of his children are fluent and another reason we want our son to be bilingual ...
he taught me that i should always address every woman as "sen~orita", if i do not know her, to show respect for her vitality, but really to avoid letting her think i think she was old and, do this, especially for the veijas ...
now my spanish is very poor .... my pronounciation is okay, but my vocabulary is pathetic ... but like many i can understand some spoken spanish ...sometimes .... if spoken slowly ... maybe repeated a few times?
after my mother-in-law died in the spring of '88 we all just sort of went into this fulltime hyper-alert massive mutual-support mode as an alternative to the total panic that we felt from losing the chief organizer, perpetrator, coordinator and sun in our family solar system ..... however christmas loomed like a hurricane nightmare .... we thought we should all go to mexico for the holidays, what the heck? .... it was a thinly-veiled ruse to aviod our grief driven by sheer panic at what berta meant to christmas
so, the whole family, 11 of us including 2 toddlers, in 4 vehicles drove about 3000 miles into mexico and back ....san luis potosi ... guanaguato ... spent new year's in morelia,... passcaro(sp?)
we were heading into the interior and had been driving all night when we stopped at a diner .... the family was at the tables, while dad and i were at the counter ... i was dependent on him for language help ... he was ready to order, the only person working was clearly having to adjust to our increasing her workload ... my sister-in-law asked dad to ask for some milk for the kids ...
"sen~ora! sen~ora!" dad calls gently as he can to the vieja who is very busy.
i give him the kindest elbow to his ribs and say, "sen~ortia!"
in a twinkling she was there in front of me, aglow with an embarrassed blush of modesty, barely able to raise her head enough to meet my gaze, our willing servant.
i could ask for the milk for the babies, but then i introduced her to father-in-law and let him make his amends for his transgression ..... after all, it turned out that she wasn't married. ... .
i loved telling this story on dad ....i love telling you now ... he was a great spirit for me .... we shared an affection i have never known with an adult man ..... we kissed when we greeted each other
now, i'd fear being called "abuelo" , 'grandfather'.
but to get back to lee's post to pat here...... things falling apart .... i do not know about other guys, but i suffer right along with you the experience of the deterioraton of our assets .... and i really think it is more than just vanity for the superfical ..... i think it is existential, too.
i'm 52 .... it's not just that aarp seems to be in my mail everyday ....
it's like i'm melting ..... that beautiful layer of fat just under the skin of the young which makes them so smooth is dissolving, along with some magic youthful musclar tension which was holding things together .... gravity is starting to win battles i never knew i was fighting
plus my receding hairline is trying to give me a mohawk .... but my second colonoscopy wasn't as bad as my first .... i get to be grateful i have no colon cancer and my next colonscopy is 5 years away...
i can not tell anyone how i feel about my stomach or love handles because my compliants are focsed on what is not visible to others..... and beause i am blessed to be thin: 6'2"; 180 , i don't get to complain about this roll around my waist and love handles that are in combat with my belt ..... it is not that i am at all fat .... it is that my muscle tone, which i never had to try to cultivate is now demanding fulltime attention .... i never had to stay in shape before, but now i'm being held hostage by the threat of being out-of-any-shape.....
still i am grateful my situation's not worse and i do feel for the folks who fight their weight becasue i know that it is a physiological and psychological nightmare for them.....
and although i am lucky, that just barely makes it any better to have to endure my face beginning to melt.
all of which is measuring the profundity of the impermanence of all things..... it is not just that all things must pass .... it is that i too am one of the things.
so fayeroe's path of acceptance is where i heading but i have a long way to go.
peace,
~ jim
poster:lil' jimi
thread:220364
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20030414/msgs/220809.html