Big, Bad 35

So I turn 35 tomorrow, an event that is giving me much angst and leading to people looking at me like I'm crazy when I articulate this.

Here's the thing.

When you're in your twenties, the teenage years aren't far behind you.  In fact, you can do a lot of the same things that characterized your adolescence.  The world is at your fingertips, so to speak, with the sky being the only limit ... or at least it seems that way when you're young and pretty and such.

And as you approach thirty, you realize the magic that permeates the adult world, how beautiful it is to see connections among and between people, places, things, and ideas.

By the time I was thirty, I knew without a doubt that I'd made a positive difference to a lot of people.  I had a sense of accomplishment that I took great pride in.

And when I'm forty, fifty, sixty ... well, I'll be even prouder of those accomplishments.  I'll be able to say with complete confidence that the world was a better place because I walked its roads.

I mean, I look forward to those days ...

So, yes, I am the odd duck that is perfectly okay with turning 40 ... but totally freaking out about turning 35.  Totally.

And then I realized that it's especially sad because it's a--let's face it--surface thing.  It's a youth thing.  An, "I don't want to look like an old lady", an "I'm going to have to get my eyebrows dyed as well as waxed at the salon now", an "I didn't get carded when I ordered a Captain and Coke Saturday night ... it's the first time I didn't get carded in ... well, pretty much ever" thing.

Wouldn't you think that, if you can take pride in your adult accomplishments and look forward happily to future endeavors, you could get over the fact that you're getting wrinkles and weight doesn't come off easily like it once did and so on?

Bottom line, I have to accept that the looks (such as they are ;-)), are leaving, that being funny and cute and peppy are no longer the things that'll get me through life.

After all, funny, cute, peppy forty- and fifty-year-olds are sort of perennial jokes ...

I know this is rambling and not concise and so on ... honestly, I'm about a second away from deleting it.  It'd be deleted already if I hadn't promised my friend Heather that I'd articulate the catalyst for my 35 freak-out.

Well, Heather, I attempted to articulate the catalyst.  All right, I failed, but the attempt was there ;-)

Any of my wise, articulate blog readers want to try to put the gist of what I mean into words?  The comments are all you, people :-)