Yeah. It’s blizzarding. The snow is already being measured in feet, and it is still coming down, and according to meteorologists it will continue to do so for another 24 hours… just in time for my 27th birthday on Monday.
Speaking of which… over the past week or so I have become increasingly aware of the fact that I am about to leave my mid-twenties behind me. I never thought that any age would bother me beyond 25 - for some reason that one bugged me, probably because it meant I was no longer part of the 18-24 age demographic that a large portion of western media caters to and all American concepts of beauty and desirability (convoluted though those concepts may be) are designed around. I remember two years ago thinking damn, now I’m no longer eligible to audition for MTV’s The Real World… and I SO wanted to be the randomly naked housemate on the next season.
Anyway, I thought I’d be ok after that. And I was, until a week or two ago. I have long been skeptical of how so many women obsess over their age; it just seems so silly. But here I am, hypocritically terrified.
It’s not the number that bothers me, it’s realizing that aging - whether it physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual - seems to speed up as time passes. My 18 year old students crack stupid jokes and pull asinine pranks that even a year or two I would have found a least moderately funny, but now that sort of thing just grates on me and makes me want to jump off a bridge. I have had to accept that despite the fact that I am only nine years their senior, the world they are growing up in is vastly different than the one I grew up in. More personally, my body has changed in weight distribution and response to food and exercise (as in food has more effect, and exercise has less). I suffer from monthly bouts of insomnia, which a friend of mine in my late thirties warned me a few years ago would happen to me by the time I was her age. I have wrinkles. I worry that every freckle on my body is melanoma. I realize that I am beyond the age where I can build bone density; I can only maintain it. All of those things and thousands more add up to make me wonder how I’ve changed so quickly.
The worst part of this is that since I’m younger than everyone I work with, I constantly get comments like “oh, you wouldn’t understand because you’re so young…” and “Well, I know you don’t have that much life experience…” and “You know, you shouldn’t wear shoes like that because when you’re older you’ll get awful bunions and ingrown toenails” that I feel like I’m in this chronological LIMBO… all of my students think I’m ancient because I’m still madly in love with the 1990’s and survived my entire childhood without the Internet, and everyone else thinks I’m this little grub waiting to grow legs and wings.
It’s all just weird to think about. Chances are, I’ll be over it by Monday.
There is, however, one significant connotation attached to the age of 27 - it’s the age at which rock stars die. Janis Joplin. Jimi Hendrix. Brian Jones. Jim Morrison. Kurt Cobain. Kristen Pfaff. Mia Zapata. Dave Alexander. Shannon Hoon, I think. The list goes on and on. I guess though as long as I stay away from guns when I’m depressed, swimming pools when people hate me, and heroin under all circumstances I’ll make it to 28 just fine. 
Filed under: drama queen, health, life coming at me fast, random, teaching
Hi,
Age does not depend upon years, but upon temperament and health. Some men are born old, and some never grow so.
I am almost to the age where my students were born after I graduated high school. That makes me feel old. Being able to still play with the varsity basketball team (and hit my jumper) in the morning makes me feel young. An hour later, teaching with an ice pack on my knee makes me feel old again.
I think it’s an up and down battle.