I have been writing my whole life and I just discovered temper tantrum is two words. How did I go this long without knowing that? Surely many times I have used those words as I have had a significant number of meltdowns and losing my shit moments. We can easily identify a toddler’s temper tantrum. I mean how can you ignore it? So visceral and they let everything hang out, and their screams shatter you to the core. They want what they want and they don’t understand why it is not being provided to them. And frankly most of the time we should just give them what they want but we have some kind of fear we are creating these monsters that expect all the good in the world at their fingertips… and then we grow up as adults who give billions to the self help industry to try and understand why we don’t believe we can have everything we want… without a temper tantrum.
We adults are supposed to behave and act in accordance with maturity and surrender to the inevitability that we can’t always get what we want (cue The Rolling Stones who I am sure got everything their little hearts’ desired and more…) So when I went on an innocent jaunt with my teen girls to buy some second hand jeans, I was not ready to face what I saw in the mirror or accept what I wanted was not presenting itself back to me (and male readers, if you think this is just a girlie post, guess again, you are as vain in middle age as we are… and you will relate.) I am not body shaming myself here by the way, so get over yourself if you want to point fingers at what I am about to say. I am preaching a reality I just didn’t want to see: my 50 something body just was not having it with second hand clothing. Nothing fit, nothing closed and I even think I ripped one top trying to pull it off my arms.
Outfit after outfit after outfit did not fit. And let me tell you why (which I figured out after the temper tantrum.) Because the people who are the most broke are in their 30’s so they sell their clothes to pay their car payments or get money to go drinking in the club, and another broke ass 30-something comes in who has a little more money and buys that broke 30 year old’s gently used Joe’s jeans. I am no longer broke, AND I am not thirty so I don’t fit into this exchange. What I feel is definitely so far from my 30 year old body than I ever have and just bad. So I had a tantrum in the car on the way home that I was “fat and old” which I don’t really believe to be true, but it felt good to marinate in how bad I felt at that moment before I figured out I could actually afford clothes that made me feel a lot better and were more appropriate to the shape of my age.
Do I wish I had the same buff yoga arms I had in my 40’s? Sure, but baking brownies and banana bread in Covid did that image in. Even if I did yoga five times a week which I have zero time for, the days of sinewy arms are over. Do I wish I had the butt I used to have? Sure but I can follow trend setters in fashion in my age and get just the right jeans that flare in all the right places to make me look like I have a rock hard butt (okay, that is a stretch, but a butt that doesn’t look like the 50 states.) If I had a butt that was big, or you have a butt that is big, apparently that is “in” so good on you, and again, no shaming just saying don’t look in thrift store mirrors and wonder what happened to you.
Nothing happened to you. You are perfect. You are just not thirty. Or if you are, stop wasting time lamenting about your life. You have not encountered gravity yet and if you started botox, for the love of God, stop.
Shameless Plug: Want to hear more interviews with my tortured book clients? Check out Matthew Brownstein this Sunday here on You Should Write A Book About That. He claims I told him his first few books he wrote were junk, which was not entirely the truth, I just told him them were not well written and I hated the covers.
At some point during our later years we have to make a frank and honest assessment of our being. Have we done the best we can in living up to our physical and mental potential or did we give in to Father Time and let ourselves go for various reasons. It is never too late to make a comeback because there are plenty of inspiration stories of "senior" people setting new personal bests in whatever activity gets them off their duff and motivated to maximize their performance. If you value your own physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual wellbeing enough to extend your longevity, then do something to make it happen! Complaining that you are "old & fat" is a start, but just the first step to recapturing your vitality that requires commitment to the cause. You may not turn back time for 20 years, but you will look and feel more alive in the long run compared to the day you admitted you have lost your "look" of yesteryear.