“If I may, he’s not really your age anymore,” my doctor friend teases me as I tell him how I injured my knee. He’s not wrong. I hurt myself arguing with my eldest son. Since our earliest childhood, we have loved to “tug” each other. It was our apelike way of giving each other affection. For a long time, I had the upper hand over him: I could pin him down with the strength of one arm and rub the top of his head with the other hand. Then, around his adolescence, we became equal force. Our battles were endless. Our egos were taking over and neither of us wanted to give in.
Today my son is 28 years old, 6 feet 3 inches tall, has impressive shoulders and is very strong. Might as well say he’s a gentle giant. Whereas I am 47 years old. Of the very athletic female body that I once had, unfortunately only a few traces remain today. It was therefore quite predictable that one day the gentle giant, without any malice, would take over his little mother. Result: a severe sprain to the right knee. We will have to wait for the MRI to know the condition of the ligaments.
If I’m telling you this, it’s because I’ve just realized, a little belatedly you might say, that my body has aged, that it has become fragile. When you’re in your late twenties or early thirties, you hear older people say: “I forget that I’m 50, in my head, I’m still 28!” » This kind of sentence often seems ridiculous to us, how can we have a different mental age and a different physical age? However, I confirm to you, our mind does indeed choose an age and clings to it, while our body undergoes the law of passing time. Of course, we see wrinkles and white hair appear, we gain weight and we make funny sounds when we get up from the couch, but we only fully understand the notion of aging the day our knee breaks!
Aging is not sexy, even less so in our performance-driven societies. If staying fit and healthy is a relevant driving force, wanting to stay young is a completely futile objective, because it is doomed to failure. Yet this is how we are sold all kinds of things: creams that are supposed to make our skin look younger, training programs to regain the shape of our 20s, miracle foods to regain a peachy complexion… The list goes on. And I’m not even talking about everything the cosmetic surgery industry offers.
Far be it from me to judge people who use these processes to slow down the signs of time passing on their body and face. But the fundamental question I ask myself is: why are we so uncomfortable with aging? Why is perimenopause, in addition to its awful symptoms, a psychologically painful time for people who experience it?
Since the count of my last eggs began, I feel less of a woman, less taken into account by my peers too, less valuable. However, I am still very far from retirement age. I am still able to lift heavy loads. I still have a lot of energy despite the hormonal roller coaster. I have a better understanding of my defense mechanisms. I have more compassion and empathy towards others. I have more knowledge and experience. Only, there you go, I am old, particularly in the eyes of my young colleagues.
I was that young girl who looked at older people with a mixture of tenderness and unease at their limp arms or their presbyopia glasses. I was always surprised and even admiring when a woman did not “look her age”. But what does it mean to look your age? And why would looking 52 be bad? Are we collectively so afraid of dying that we begin, 40 years before our expiration date, to find that we already smell like curds?
Between my cracking knee, the image that society gives me and my own vitality, few things, to tell the truth, agree. I understand better why some people talk about the mid-life crisis. It’s a moment when we lose our bearings, as we were in adolescence. We have difficulty finding our place in society, we feel less adequate, less valued. I can better understand now the desire to give up everything to buy a convertible or to start a new life in Costa Rica. We are looking for adrenaline to prove to ourselves that we are still capable, still alive.
I think of the 80-year-old people who will read this column and who will probably find me very stupid for thinking that I am old at 47, and they will be right. I should look in the mirror and see 3 p.m. sunshine on a beautiful summer day. A sun which is no longer at its zenith, but which is still far from setting, which illuminates and still warms the terrace enough for us to enjoy it.