In a few weeks, I’ll be on the wrong side of my mid-30s.
You know, the over the hill and halfway down the other side end. The one with the great big pile of Sisyphean boulders stacked carelessly at the bottom. The unfashionable end. The one traditionally lacking in glitter and shiny things. The end that’s that much closer to 40- whatever 40 means these days. I’m not really sure any more. It used to be a pretty firm indicator that a person was a grown up but I’m starting to have my doubts.
According to my mother, I’m still in my mid to late 20s and will likely remain there until I qualify for the pension I’ll never be able to claim because I’ve spent my entire adult life as a transient (one step up from hobo according to Revenue Canada, I believe). I know that for me every age beyond 28 didn’t quite feel real, as if those numbers belonged to someone else’s identity. For a few years in my mid-30s I actually lost track and honestly couldn’t remember if I was 33 or 35. How can I be grown up when I have no house or car or even furniture to call my own? No marriage or kids or stable job, home or city or even country. I’ve started over so many times that I always feel like I’m just at the beginning. When will I feel my age and what should my age feel like?
***
When I went home to Canada this summer, I had a long talk with one of my friends from Istanbul who moved to Vancouver when I moved to Shanghai. We are the same age, separated by only a few months, and have had a very similar life trajectory: lots of sudden halts and shifts and detours and careless whims. Dozens of countries were involved. Many jobs, many flats, many shifting circles of friends. We both suddenly realized at 37 that we were no longer technically young and able flit about accordingly, starting over endlessly if the need be. We were now seen as grown ups by people that we forgot were younger than us. We were no longer the young ones, it seemed. We were the adults. It was a very weird feeling, as if we were impostors, unqualified for the job.
Feet at 30, about to turn 31.
These days, increasingly, people assume I am married and commiserate when I say I have no kids. My hypothetical husband and theoretical kids are frequently the first things that are brought up in situations with people I’ve just met. This is especially true in conversations with locals here in Shanghai, as the idea of being over 30 and unmarried and childless is simply unfathomable or at the very least, highly unlikely. During the flurry of formal guanxi-building banquets I had to attend back in May and June, my imaginary family life was toasted dozens of times by representatives from various local government agencies. I never knew how to politely correct them. I can’t quite fathom that I’m even old enough to get married or have kids.
***
Sexual harassment has eased up considerably in the past few years, something I’m happy to say goodbye to, but also wondering if I’m suddenly too decrepit and invisible to entice even the assholes out there. I no longer feel pressure to look trendy and pretty in a twenty- something way but I do grieve that I had never actually had that chance to begin with. Now that I look older, the chance is gone to ever be lithe, adorable, cool in a culturally sanctioned way. Not that I ever was to begin with. I was a massive dork back then too.
At 25.
I am frustrated by the fact that my face and body are not necessarily reflecting who I think I am. I look tired and haggard more often than I’d like, though I blame the fact that I’m juggling 3 jobs and mild insomnia right now for that. I am still bewildered when I am treated with a degree of respect and authority upon meeting people, rather than as the rather dubious flake that I am convinced that I am.
***
One thing I have found surprisingly liberating about getting older is that I no longer feel pressure to look like a 20 year old. Because I’m not. At 20, I didn’t even look like an acceptable 20 year old. Now I have an excuse. At 20, most people I met thought I was 30 and I didn’t correct them because they were around 30 too and I didn’t want to mess up their honest perception of me. Because I was decontextualized– travelling through countries, settling in for a year or two at most– there were no external cues by which they could judge my chronological position in life. I liked that. It was liberating.
***
When I first arrived in Shanghai in 2009, one of my students confided in me about how old and frustratingly out of touch one of their other teachers was. ‘How old are they?’ I asked. Thirty, she said. Impossibly geriatric. Practically dead from advanced age. I was 35, I said, and her jaw dropped, eyes bugged. She refused to believe me. Not because I didn’t look 35. I did. I had looked 35 since I was 25. But because I acted like me rather than a number. I dressed like me rather than like a predetermined stage of life. When I do speaking tests these days, I find myself noting when checking ID cards that I now consider anyone born before 1985 as old– because here, quite frequently, that is old. The test candidates who were born in, say, 1980 or 1977 or whatever, act and dress as if they were a decade older than me.
In my metaphorical group portrait, the one containing all the different incarnations of me, I am not older than the me who was in London or Kayseri or Cape Town or Galway. I am just the one who lives in Shanghai and who has a slightly different hair cut and a different wardrobe. I’m the version with the slightly funkier shoe collection than the others, due to not living out of a backpack for 5 years. This version of me has a thing for funky shawls and actually wears blue. I never used to wear blue. This one wears mary-janes not Doc Martens. Different but not necessarily older.
They say your thirties are better because you have the self assurance that was lacking in your twenties but I am weighed down by an awareness of all the accumulated crap I’ve dealt with and I find it much harder to be elated and excited and inspired now. The self assurance comes from having gone through a lot of stupid, stressful, difficult times (repeatedly) and doing very challenging things that now feel very matter of fact. I miss the doubt followed by amazement. I find it really hard to feel proud of what I’ve accomplished, as those things were done by a totally different version of me. You know, the Turkey me or the Ireland me or the Canada me. This current me is just starting out in Shanghai. Barely a toddler.
***
Given that I’ve so far inadvertently failed to accept chronological time (and the expectations that go with it) as it exists, I’m pleased to accept the idea that I am officially free to be whatever age I want to be. I intend to be 5. Or maybe 11. With a dash of 86, for good measure.
You can guess my age by counting the rings.
15 Responses
Oh boy. So much of this sounds familiar. I think 40s are better than 30s. Hitting 50 can go either way. I find I’m thinking many of these thoughts now.
I certainly hope that it’s true. I’m actually not that impressed by my 30s and am crossing my fingers that as I become an insane old woman, things will be better 😉
This is not fair MaryAnne, just as I am writing ‘Almost 50, and still a tosser’ you come up with this.
On the other hand, since we sort of part of an anarchic mini bitchy community, much worser things could have happened, like you being a libra too.
Phew.
Conrad recently posted..Walking The Streets Of Sinop – Turkey
You can still write it. It fits in nicely with a larger theme that needs to be discussed. I’m sure, however, if I was a Libra too, neither post would get written. 🙂
We can make it all part of the Anarchic Bitchy Community topic-du-jour, yeah?
Oops, I forgot a closing tag. Please correct this old git.
Conrad recently posted..Istanbul 1999, A Spy Story
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, even though my situation is different (married homeowner in the US). I don’t “feel” 43 inside, though sometimes my physical body feels older. In my head, I’m somewhere in my early 30’s. I suppose it helps that no one believes me when I tell them my age. I hope at least that lasts a while longer.
Oddly enough, my husband and I were discussing this last night at dinner, celebrating our 17 year (!) anniversary. About how we don’t “feel” our age. His theory was it was because we don’t have children. But then again, he says in his head he’s a teenager, so what does he know? 😉
I also noticed that the sexual harassment ended some time in my mid 30’s along with even any general flirting in my direction. It’s a relief and yet a little disconcerting at the same time.
BTW, not sure why being a Libra is bad (says the Libra turning 44 next month).
Kristina recently posted..Istanbul Markets; Bazaars and Walking Streets
Nothing wrong with Libras at all. Am a big fan. I like their gentle diplomacy/tact, far better than my clumsy virgo brutality. Like I said in Conrad’s reply, if we were both Libras, the post wouldn’t be written because we’d be writing and rewriting it to find the most diplomatic way to express ourselves. I just bleuuurgh it out, which can go horribly wrong sometimes 🙁
Anyway.
I still don’t know how I feel about the sexual harassment/flirting thing. I don’t want to be totally invisible just yet…
I think China, especially, is a country for the young. Nobody in my company is over 35 (I’m the oldest at 43). People like to hire right out of school or kids under 25 years of age. You certainly don’t see many geriatrics navigating the streets by themselves in Shanghai. So, to feel *old* in China is pretty standard when you’re over 30, while in the West a woman is “coming to her own” during middle age (and not the Middle Ages). I enjoy getting older, personally… and I’m hoping that Chinese Confucian cultural thing of “respecting your elders” will kick in soon.
I find the resignation and acceptance of fixed life paths unnerving here. Things like, I’m X years old so this is what I’m doing. When I’m Y years old, I’ll be doing that. Anything out of order– like not being married, or maybe going back to school at 40, or changing jobs, careers, countries regularly after age 25– is seen as odd and unfathomable. My 19 year old students were pretty confident about their general trajectories and the older exam candidates I interviewed tended to follow that script (whether they were happy or not, I dunno).
I like being a perpetual outsider here because I can say fuck it, your rules don’t apply to me.
“Because I was decontextualized– travelling through countries, settling in for a year or two at most– there were no external cues by which they could judge my chronological position in life. I liked that. It was liberating.” Related so much to this! Even back when I was 18, I didn’t feel 18, and no one could tell I was either, and I loved it. Also, this entire piece feels like looking into the future of what my life will be like in 10 or so years.
I like the idea of time and aging not being linear but rather a series of randomly placed bubbles of experience, some to the right, some to the left, some over there…
Another awesome post. Thanks!
Do you ever wonder if this weird dislocation applies in general to our age-group? I look at “The Kids” today with all the rhetoric around GenYs and Millenials and Digital Nomads blah blah blah, and the kind of self-dramatizing that seems part of being 22 now, and how consistent the message seems to be. I remember the Epic Generation Wars of the early 90s, with all the GenX v. Babyboomers stuff. And I feel sort of caught in the middle, like at no point did I have A Generation, and therefore at no point did I see my own development reflected in what was going on in my culture. At least, not the way the Boomers, the Xers or the Yers seem to have experienced. Or maybe everything– people, generations, moments– seems more coherent and Meaningful from the outside?
I keep watching videos from the mid 90s (“Don’t Look Back in Anger” by Oasis, for some reason) and trying to figure out if there was a moment of coherence that I missed, one that would orient me in the chronological the way we’re supposed to be. Part of this is personal– the various traumas of the last five years have been profoundly disorienting– but I don’t seem to be the only one who’s all… “huh? time? What the hell!?”
That whole generation thing perplexes me. I still don’t know which, if any, I belong to as the parameters kept shifting- when I was in high school, I wasn’t gen x but I think my birth year became gen x when I was at university.
I never felt like I fit any of them anyway. All the crap I read these days from Generations XYZWhatever about how one generation screwed the other over and the other getting all pouty because another-another screwed them and and and…
Argh.
I just don’t relate.
I do relate to what you just wrote though. I feel very unrooted, very disconnected to the greater culture. I look around me here in China at people my age and see very little resemblance on any level. I’m not sure about Canada.
I skipped my 20 year reunion this summer (hello Morocco instead) because although I was mildly curious about what happened to people, I knew I had no connection to them. It would be like visiting irrelevant strangers and trying to pretend they were meaningful to your life in some way…
1. There’s a family friend in my past who said that as I child, I was the MOST adult child he had ever encountered. Apparently, I’m aging in reverse, but not in some creepy Benjamin Button way.
2. Another friend says that there are many modern humans who are living their lives out of order. I mean, traditional order, the one your banquet host probably imagine, I’m guessing. I like this idea and I think I am okay with the fact that I’m one of those people.
3. I really like reading this. Thank you.
Thank you. And yes to everything you said.