It was recently suggested to me that I could monetize my presence here by getting sponsored by brands I use. You know, share my beauty routine or anti-aging hacks and be a really-for-real influencer. And y’all the hilarity of that.

I told them that beauty industry would be horrified by me.

If you see me wearing mascara and it’s not currently like, mom’s night out, it’s from yesterday. Because I don’t wash my face. And it’s not like, Ohhhh, facial cleanser is so drying, it’s that face washing, outside of a full-blown shower, is a sensory NIGHTMARE. Get water all over the sink and in my hair and down my forearms and… no thank you. I’ll sleep in make up and SPF before I’ll make myself do something so offensive right before bed. Look at me, protecting my peace.

See? I’m a nightmare.

My skincare routine consists of a single product. OneSkin. There. No gatekeeping here.

I brush my hair 50 strokes every night. Just like Caroline Ingalls. I do have a fancy brush, but I mostly use one of these cheap Goody pics because it’s good for the scalp. I think. And I will sleep in a cap just like Ma, too. Only, mine’s silk and not cotton because when the same hairs have been on your head for like, a decade (how gross does that sound?), you gotta avoid friction.

I have an estrogen patch because I am not going gently into that good night, thank you very much. I think this helps my skin. I can’t prove it.

Also, I don’t drink alcohol anymore so do with that what you will.

But here’s my very best beauty hack for this middle age madness. That chin hair you can feel but can’t see it even in the school pick up line where the light is the best? Mascara. Give your chin a little swipey-swipe and you’ll see ALL the hairs, not just your tormentor. Pluck away, friend. I use tube mascara and it works great. But I can’t speak for traditional mascara.

***

But if you’ll allow me to share some beauty tips I’ve gleaned from women around me, I think you’ll find them beneficial.

Wanna glow like you just rolled in a meadow of fireflies? Be kind. I could not be more serious. The kindest most open-hearted people I know are also the ones who look like they’re lit up from the inside. I’ve learned that they’re not always happy. They’re not always performing. But they are always kind. The best part about this is how contagious it can be. Borrow someone’s light. Then let it change you and watch your light light up someone else. I do not care that this is cheesy because it is true.

Live authentically, even when it’s scary. Fear is not a sign that something is wrong, by the way. It’s a sign that it’s new. Do the new and do it scared. Stop playing roles just to make other people comfortable. Be so much yourself that when people come into your life who need you, they’ll find you (you probably need them, too). Bring your silly, your weird, your loving, your creative and open self to every interaction and let it sort the real ones from the rest.

Be invested in other people’s happiness. I don’t mean people-pleasing because lord knows, that was aging me faster than smoking ever could. I mean, chase joy and give joy. Be curious and engaged and interested in people. Strong community ties, by the way, are what’s going to keep us young. I mean, we’re probably still going to have crepey necks, but we’re going to have our pick of besties who will pull the skin back in photos for us.

Now, pretend I tapped my fingernails on some plastic jars and off you go.

I am unbearable to watch tv with.

Not in the old person way where I interject “oooh, isn’t this the guy who was in that movie that we saw that one time in the theater when the popcorn was burnt?” Although, that’s probably coming for me soon. I apologize in advance.

My personal affliction is keen pattern recognition. Doesn’t matter how well-written or how well-directed (in fact, the better done the production, the more likely it is to mimic real life patterns that my brain has scanned and parsed), I don’t just know what’s going to happen, I know what they’re going to say as it’s happening. That’s a very long sentence. I know.

I’d say it’s as annoying for me as it is for anyone sitting with me, but that’s not true. I fucking hate surprises. So it doesn’t bother me one bit to know what’s coming. And I married a man who hates spoilers. But I’d bite a hole through my tongue before I could hold in every prediction.

I’m sorrrrrry. But I’ll do it again.

Pattern recognition, paired with a deeply intuitive nature, means people don’t surprise me very often, either. I know I’m not the only one who walks into a room and can read immediately what the vibe is. I know things without knowing them. If I have a dream about you, you can bet it’s coming true in one way or another because I am dialed in. Vibe is everything. And I can usually sense if the person I’m talking to is being genuine within a few sentences. Usually.

But when people do surprise me, especially when they let me down, I don’t recover easily. I get so hurt and so angry at myself. How did I miss it? I should have seen that coming. Case in point, Artie. I should have seen ego, entitlement, and aggression but I missed it.

Or maybe I just didn’t want to see it. My particular handicap is that I want people to be…good. At least not hurtful.

The other day, I watched my dog race to the back fence, just so excited to greet whoever was passing by at the time. It was a man who was friendly and a dog who was…not. The dog barked menacingly but my silly human in a dog suit just stood there, tail furiously wagging. I said, to no one in particular, “That dog has no self-preservation instincts.”

Ahem.

Mental Health Instagram loves to point out that highly intuitive / highly sensitive people are that way because it’s a trauma response. Yes, I had to intuit a lot as a kid to gauge my own emotional and physical safety. But that can’t be the whole picture. I think some of our personality traits are honed by experience rather than created by them. I see it in my own children and they live in a stable, loving environment.

I firmly believe that high sensitivity is a feature, not a bug. But damn if it doesn’t require you to also develop some solidly aggressive self-preservation skills. And that, unfortunately, has not come naturally to me. I just want to stand at the back gate furiously wagging my tail.

I arrived on the mountain by 3:00 and decided to fit in a hike. In the Rockies, afternoon storms would have persuaded me not to attempt it, but here, the California sky was clear and it was breezy and warm. The manager at the inn across the road advised me on local hiking routes. Muir Woods was down the mountain, a six or so mile loop I’d save for the next day. It was the reason I’d chosen Mountain Home as a base in the first place. I couldn’t wait to see the redwoods.

“It’s…challenging coming back up,” he warned. So in light of the late hour, I chose a closer destination on the same path, filled up my water reservoir and headed out.

I was steps from the inn when I ran into Artie. A wiry old man of almost 80 who seemed unsure of where he was going. I was standoffish with him at the start. He tried to tell me I was mistaken about where the trailhead was (I was not) and I read him for a guy who didn’t like to be wrong.

We made polite introductions but I stayed several feet ahead, only looking back when I needed to repeat what I’d said. His hearing aids, he said, didn’t always work so great. At some point, I passed my turn off, and Artie suggested I continue on with him to Muir Woods. It was a pleasant hike to the national monument, he assured me. I thought, why not. My legs were fresh. And if I knocked it out that afternoon, I could return to climb Tamalpais the next morning.

Artie sweetened the deal. For the pleasure of my company, he’d happily buy me a hot chocolate at the visitor’s center. I agreed.

We hiked down the mountain, him doing the lion’s share of the talking, mostly about his wife, who had passed very suddenly not that long ago. I asked questions and shared bits about my own life. The hike was beautiful and several times I had to stop to pet the moss on a tree or gape at the trees towering over us.

As promised, when we reached the bottom, he bought me a hot chocolate. I picked up souvenirs for the boys. A sticker for my water bottle. An ornament for the tree. We sat in the cool canopy of ancient redwoods while he spoke more about his late wife, their grown children, and his grief. We toasted to her memory. It was disarming and very paternal.

In that moment, I thought about how I’d tell the story of meeting Artie. It would have been with a certain degree of warmth, I think, that now will be missing from the retelling.

The way back up was laborious for my travel companion. Artie was thirty some years my senior, so I lead slowly, stopping when his breathing sounded coarse. Late afternoon was yielding to evening and I had some concern that we wouldn’t make it up the mountain before sunset.

When we did finally reach the inn, Artie asked if I’d like to join him for a quick bite. This is when I should have politely declined. I was tired. I’d have rather driven down the mountain for a real dinner. Alone. But I didn’t want to be unkind. So I joined him at a table on the inn’s wooden deck and ordered a sandwich.

Halfway through dinner, it got weird. Artie had a glass of wine. And I wonder if that didn’t change his intentions, so much as…unlock them. He was midway through telling me how he met his late wife when he stopped and declared how beautiful I looked in my glasses. We were kindred spirits, he said. I was immediately on edge. I sat further back in my chair.

A breeze blew through and I took the opportunity to tell him I was cold and was done for the night. The inn’s manager was hovering nearby as we said our good-byes. I turned an offered embrace into an arm’s length side hug. “Drive safe,” I said. And that’s when Artie, declaring me so lovely, pulled me close and aggressively kissed my face. I pushed him off of me, astonished.

Before I could register what had happened, the manager intervened and it was over. He ushered the old man out the door and I was left to figure out just what the hell happened. Had I been too friendly? Why had I not just said no to dinner?

Why was I making his bad behavior my responsibility?

My face burned where his coarse scruff had scratched me. It didn’t stop burning until I sat in the bath that night and scrubbed him off of my skin with a washcloth. I wish I could have washed away the entire afternoon. It is impossible to explain how awful it felt.

As I climbed into bed, I sent an SOS to a girlfriend. “Why are men….” I trailed off. Why are men. Then I turned off the light and fell asleep feeling disturbed.

Artie and I had exchanged email addresses, and in the next day, he emailed several times. I sent them all to trash. When I was on my way back to Colorado, he sent a final email, apologizing for “offending” me. He’s used to being very affectionate with family members, he reasoned. I stopped reading there. The entitlement was infuriating. Whatever he meant by it, that was irrelevant.

The trip, so long in planning and something I’d looked forward to so much felt so… tainted. The sticker I’d probably never put on my water bottle. The Christmas ornament I couldn’t imagine hanging with any fond feelings. “You did that,” I thought, and deleted his apology. It was not my job to teach him how to behave. Nor was I in the business of absolution. Why are men, indeed.

He said he could tell how much I missed it, being the girl who roamed the city, collecting experiences, writing about it, having fans, admirers and even haters. Notoriety. I could have it again, he said.

“Start it up again. If people knew it was there, they’d come back in a second.”

“I didn’t take well to the scrutiny.” I grimaced at the memory. And unsurprisingly the sting of old criticisms began tingling under my skin. I said nothing, though, because I sensed he’d be disapproving that I couldn’t simply *not* feel old hurt.

He lived most comfortably in absolutes, though his own pain was like a too-bright alarm clock he’d thrown an old shirt over. Still there, faintly glowing. I was tender, never appropriately armored, and no good at pretending otherwise. We are who we are. He asked once, while critiquing a painting I’d done, if I was fragile about it. “Of course not,” I’d lied.

Always, was the truth.

“You could just ignore it,” he said matter-of-factly.

We talked more than once over the analogy of holding thoughts, like sand in our palms, and spreading our fingers to let them filter away. It’s imperative for proper meditation, sifting errant thoughts.

But feelings?

No. We’re crucial, I countered, in a silent argument with his unflinching logic, those of us who can’t deflect feeling. Those of us who are always deeply affected by it. Or else, how would there be any art?

Just then, we crossed the street that transverses the park, and my stomach went cold. As if to illustrate the point.

“I lived on the Upper East Side and he lived on the Upper West,” I explained as succinctly as I could manage. “This is the street that ran between us. It’s where I was standing, waiting for a bus, when he told me he’d gotten another girl pregnant.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. I slid my hand into the coarse, woolen crook of his elbow to skip over a puddle, shiny with filth. I reminded myself I’d already forgiven the transgressor. “It’s fine.”

Was it? Even with forgiveness, simply stepping across a span of pavement became had become an emotional disemboweling.

His face was placid, pointing forward in the direction of travel, not registering mine. That was him. Always focused on the trajectory, unwise to the open book of my own face.

I told myself that it was not a thing you could take personally, someone else’s craving to bring reason to your lack of it. I accepted this. Besides, when you order the usual, you should know what you’re getting.

I knew.

I’d like to say that my body and I have come to terms with one another. But the truth is, I feel betrayed by it constantly. Not just the aches of middle age that creep in mysteriously overnight, having slept on the right pillow the wrong way. That it insists on failing me, suddenly, walking down the stairs.

Shit, there goes a hip.

It’s the droop of my cheeks as they slide down my face into jowls that weren’t there last year. The lines around my mouth. Eyes that don’t see without assistance. The papery creases on the backs of my hands. The way my tits sway low, past their prime, past their purpose.

Some days, I am aging gracefully. Embracing weighted vest walks and eye make up for ‘mature’ skin (though that term can just fuck right off). And some days, I am aging in a silent, screaming resistance. Thrashing around inside while patting sunscreen onto spotty skin and smiling with teeth darkening with age despite attentive brushing. I should drink less coffee. But I won’t.

I’m keenly aware that this is just a new version of the same war. A standoff that started before I even *knew* my own body. Watching my mother slap at her thighs, sweat to the oldies, bounce around the house in a Metabolite jitter. Her body always requiring… altering. And as I watched my own thighs turn into hers, I knew, with a certainty, that it was unacceptable to look like me. Decades of wearing a sweater tied around my waist to hide the offensive too-muchness. Eating less to be worth more. Cringing at the wobble of cellulite as I crawled out of a bed warm with a man who must, I thought, just be tolerating it.

The vocabulary of insecurity. Saddlebags and tennis ball boobs and secretary spread and booby do (‘her belly sticks out more than her boobies do’). Meat curtains. Suck it in, push it up, cover it up.

Somewhere along the way, I learned to take up my space. To talk over the noise of my own imperfections, hissing like a radiator pipe in winter. Pay it no mind. This body has seen some shit. She is strong and capable and beautiful, in her way.

Sure, sometimes I catch my reflection in a mirror and wonder, who is that old lady? But then I think, let me tell you about her. She’s kind of a badass.

*tap tap* Is this thing on?

This is what happens when a girl updates her Facebook profile. I said I was going to dip my toes back in, so here I am rolling up my pant legs. A woman of her word!

If I’m going to do this, though, it’s going to be different, so let’s get that out of the way. I mean, it’s still gonna be me running my mouth. About womanhood, relationships, life. But now I’m old and my estrogen patch makes me feisty. I don’t suffer the fool. Comments are subject to approval. Unapologetically.

There’s going to be political commentary from time to time.  The world is on fire. I’ll have something to say about it. I used to be so afraid of how much I didn’t know, but I see that’s not stopping a whole lot of folk these days. And if you can’t beat ‘em. All I’m saying is, if you have a strong attachment to a certain color hat, we aren’t going to see eye-to-eye. Let’s be okay with that.

I’ll be leaving my kids out of this mess. They’re amazing little humans who have every right to go about in the world without their mom posting embarrassing shit about them. I’ve taken down the older posts about them, too, not that you wouldn’t be able to find them if you really wanted to.

Oh, also? I write poetry now. I guess I missed that part during my teen years so we’re getting it out now.

Some big pieces of me got lost when I stopped expressing myself. So I’m invested in seeing if I can get some of that back, and along the way, entertain y’all. It’s going to take some work to get things updated and working again. So hang tight. Good things to come.

P.S. I upped the font size. I got you.