The rwar of aging.

Ellen Lloyd
Sep 3, 2018 · 4 min read

At 50, I have put my IRL age on my dating profile. Four men are currently in a dating rotation. They drop off for the usual reasons: meanness, too much conversation about their “terrible” exs, mansplaining, defensiveness, and boredom (mine). I’ve grown quite fond of one over the last fifteen months. We’re one another’s harbor, but remain undefined and untethered, the sum of our parts, an arrangement I alternatively revel in and grow irritated with.

One friend remarked that I navigate my romantic life like a man, enjoying the privilege of designing the architecture of my own romantic life. In a society that fetishizes relationships and labels, living without a label, and telling everyone the truth, feels subversive and deliciously, unexpectedly free.

And that leads me to my main point. Smack in the middle of midlife I feel qualified to proclaim the freedom of midlife. Even if science can beget me a baby from a Petri dish just by cutting a check from my investment account, I choose to not make that choice. The fact that my body cannot generate that biological event of baby feels, on this side of fertility, like a deeply freeing event.

Science coupled with age coupled with money brings you choice. It also brings you freedom, including from your own internalized misogyny.

At 50, I weekly attract the backhanded, “you look amazing for 50,” comment. The “for 50,” is code for “past your expiration date,” the moment of self-destruction, when your own internal beauty-generating hormone supply and dewey skin says, “enough,” and flattens into a configuration with less wattage, and the patriarchy turns away. Some say it to me as if they’re winking, a you-caught-me, as if I concocted a lust-generating spell with the witchy magic of an ancient crone. (Which is not to say that I did not do exactly that — but that’s a story for another day).

Ladies, one day you wake up, freed from that tug in your gut for a baby, and tug in your heart to have strong arms wrapped around you, and you realize: holy fuck, I am, I was, and I will always be what I was searching for.

You become curious and more interested in designing a spaceship or drafting a complex fairy tale than finding a mate.

Your turn at 25 has passed. You let another woman be 25. You let her bask in the stares and glances that were yours once. And your feel relieved of anticipatory fear for the inevitable rapacious grope and accompanying primal terror when every synapse screams, how will I get away from this one this time.

Freed from that devouring vibe, you step into your own light, you feel unstoppable, you pour yourself another cup of tea and ask, what next? You realize that you don’t actually care. You trust the wonder.

You learn a new way to command the attention in the room: through the wattage of your integrity, your intelligence, your wisdom, your courage. And as the rules of engagement change around you, you have found the solid ground in your core, even in the oddest, most disorienting moments.

You dream up worlds of your own choosing and promise to write five books. You vow to travel to the famed baths of Japan, the tea lands of Sri Lanka, and the deathbeds of your beloveds. You befriend the unloveliest person you meet and watch her become beautiful. You read stacks of stories and artists’ musings. You brush your hair as if it were gossamer. You chase excellence.

Mostly you feel courage and amusement. And you realize no desiring patriarchal glance ever filled you with power and strength like meeting your essential self.

Because to make it to 50 means you’ve found your strength, truth, purpose, values, and wisdom. And sister if it is only a little murmur you feel when you read those words, listen closely. Silence the distractions and climb deep into a cave until you can hear her voice. She speaks without quivering. She knows how to fly.

She will tell you to date one or none or five or to flirt with the 30-year-old and wear your reading glasses while you do it. She will tell you to decline the invitation and read the stack of the collecting New Yorkers on your table or pet your cat, or explore a new creative outlet. She tells you to leave him or leave her or stay with him or stay with her but move to the other room. She tells you to get a job or quit a job or go back to school. She tells you to stand and reminds you to sleep.

She will tell you your joys and passions and treasures. She is your treasure.

And she teaches you to watch out for that beautiful, dew-skinned 25-year-old on the other side of the room as the wolves paw and grasp at her. Your watchful gaze helps her to grow into you one day, just as someone will show you the way into your next chapter when it is time.

Ellen Lloyd

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Curious NorCal woman. Curious about work, gender, crime, adventure and stripping away the layers