Feeling worse for wear
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published Saturday July 27, 2013

I am unrecognisable at the hairdressers. That cape of black plastic is oppressive, always one press stud too tight at the neck. My shroud and I am pinned to my chair by a dazzling beam of expensive salon lighting. It shines down from the fashionably blacked-out ceiling and gives my skin a sickly pallor. I try to escape the kaleidoscope of mirrors by burying myself in New Weekly’s latest on George Clooney’s beard but eventually I am forced to confront my reflection.

It’s a shock to see myself: I am not this woman, am I? Is this what 45 is supposed to look like? I notice a droop around my jawline – never spotted that before. There’s a new crease in my neck, the start of some strange puckering under the chin, a deepening furrow between my eyebrows. The face I’m staring at in the mirror is a good decade older than the one I was hoping to see. Do people over 40 feel as old as they look?

Which raises another question: How old do I feel? I’ve been bluffing maturity for years. Perhaps I now look weathered enough to pull it off. I like masquerading my immature self as a grown up. Doesn’t every generation think it has mastered the deception of youthfulness?

So what age am I on the inside? The death of one of my best girlfriends has shattered my belief that I am guaranteed to grow old. Days after her funeral, on the most depressing of rainy afternoons, I perched on an upturned milk crate in our garage, sifting through boxes of photos I hadn’t looked at in a decade. I couldn’t pick out half the faces without my glasses, which was disconcerting. I got pins and needles in my foot from squatting at an uncomfortable angle. I used to sit like this by choice. But on this day, it was painfully obvious I was looking back on my past self – the girl who thought she’d always feel invincible.   

There was something about those early snaps, pictures of my girlfriends and me in our early twenties at all those parties and trips away. It took me a while to work out what it was: it was a freshness, the jubilation of starting out, life abounding with potential. It was a time before we knew the meaning of illness, or tragedy or divorce. I am no longer so wildly optimistic. I’m still optimistic, energetically so, but I feel the weight of my responsibilities. I cannot imagine feeling as carefree as I did at 25.

I got off the crate, packed up and wandered back into the house. My husband was taking a shower: “How old do you feel?” I asked.

“46, of course,” comes the reply, “how could I feel anything else?” I press him further: “Yes honey, I know your rock-hard body is 46, but what about your head?

“That’s an absurd question, seeing I can only feel the age that I am. If I feel 35 then what am I to do with the last eleven years of memories?” He had a point, but not one I wanted.

So I asked my mum. At 76, she is in great nick, save for the arthritis crippling her hands and feet. She comes back to me hours later saying the question had thrown her. She felt 66, she had decided. “My body still does whatever I tell it, apart from these stupid fingers. But I’ve lost so many special people. That takes a huge toll. Grieving makes me feel old.”

When I was 14, my mum was 45. Our house hosted a stream of raucous visitors, the men sitting around on folding chairs with their stubbies on their knees as Mum and the other wives handed round platters of cocktail onions and smoked oysters on toothpicks. To my teenage self, her crowd seemed enviably worldly.

And yet here I am at home on yet another Saturday night, stretched out on the sofa with the cat and the weekend papers, my old man engrossed in the Tour de France. I must look like a middle-aged dullard but I don’t even care.

I no longer skip down stairs two at a time. I’m scared of tripping, knowing what havoc a twisted knee would cause to family life. I’m not so fond of looking at my body (I try to avoid the rear view at all times). But if I had to take a stab at how old I feel, I’d say I feel 37. That’s about the age I’d comfortably settled into my skin. I was happy. I keep that age in my head as a favourite.

Maybe I’ve already used up my quota of late nights. On evenings out, when I’ve done my hair, put on high heels and am preparing to hold a glass of champagne in each hand, I feel 30 again. Until the next morning, after five hours sleep, when I feel 80 plus a fortnight.