Turning 50 this year means I am just nine years from the age my mother was when she died. This is holy-balls-where-did-the-time-go shocking. I mean, the fact that almost seventeen years has passed since she dipped out is nobs-nuts, cuh-ray-zee. So much has happened that it makes perfect sense, but it seems like the time went by faster than a teenage boy out the gate on prom night. I was 33 when she died, and now, pushing 50, I’ve been kicked in the dick with umpteen signs that I ain’t getting any younger. Such as…

Oatmeal with dry toast – I could eat it every day. I add more nuts to my trail mix instead of M&Ms. And I barf a cacophony of involuntary grunts and monosyllabic noises whenever I bend down, get up, reach for something, or do pretty much anything at all. The number of vitamins I take twice a day borders insanity, but are vital to my aching joints, hot flashes and – TMI alert – parched vagina. And, in all honesty, if I laugh or cough too much? I’m liable to pee my pants. Just a little. And possibly fart.  

(Side note, but probably important to let my readers know: As I get older I am more shameless than ever when it comes to oversharing. You’re welcome. Also: I’m sorry if it seems disrespectful to say my Mom ‘dipped out’. Sort of. I mean, it’s funny, I guess, to think of her looking around, assessing the total shithouse of a mess our family was in at that time – but that’s a different post – and saying, “Nope. I’m out.” Also, Also: I don’t literally have a dick, People. I mean, sure I haven’t posted in awhile but, come on.)

Anyhoo, as I was saying and moving on from my idiocratic and very apparent ADHD tendencies…. Thesaurus.com has all sorts of synonyms for ‘aging’ – not many super flattering, unsurprisingly. So as it goes, I am crumbling, declining, fading and waning. But the general meaning of the word is not necessarily accurate, at least when speaking about people. For my part, in spite of the telltale signs of the obvious, the whole process of aging doesn’t really bother me too much – no one here gets out alive and all that. I feel appreciably healthy and I look alright, all things considered. And in the end, like most of us, I’m just starting to figure my shit out, which goes a hell of a long way in helping to assess the first half of my life in order to determine how I want to live the second.

So here I am, just about nine years younger than my mother was at her death, working to adopt – and if necessary, adapt to – the opposite of those ridiculous synonyms of aging I found online. Sure, from the moment I came in kicking and screaming- just like every other person and every other thing in the entire wide world, I have been decaying and rotting and scooting my way toward death. But I have also been developing, ripening, enhancing and strengthening – antonyms of those same words from thesaurus.com. Antonyms? A big fuck that. These are definitions.

I am AGING, dammit! Hear me fucking roar!! Until bedtime about 10pm, anyway- 11 if I’m feeling really crazy….then everybody shut the hell up and let me sleep.