Turning 50
One day I realized that turning 50 may be the best thing that had happened to me in a long time.
Sometimes, I am going to admit it, I feel sorry for myself.
I feel like I was dealt a bad hand in the card game of life. My parents are difficult people, argumentative, excessively frugal and ridiculously pragmatic, my siblings are ego-obsessed men, and my friends are hundreds of miles away.
So, sometimes, I feel sorry for myself.
I have an advanced degree and my husband has multiple certifications. But we started with nothing in our early years of marriage, did well for a bit, lost most of what we had managed to save and started over in a new city. We still live in fear that what we have could vanish again.
Hitting the big 50
A few years ago, I turned 50. I thought almost nothing about it except, “I’m 50? Really? Well, that’s just great. Now I’m officially old.”
Other than those questions and sarcastic comments, life went on as usual. I didn’t feel any different.
But one night, watching tv after my kids had gone to bed, I thought back on a friend I haven’t seen in almost ten years.
I was in my early 40s when we last met, but I remember that she had turned 50 because she was talking about it to me and our other friends there.
She told us that turning 50 was liberating. She felt like she could do and say anything she wanted for the first time in her life.
“Men no longer look at me,” she said, laughing at our expressions. I remember smiling, but thinking, so why are you telling us that?
“No, it’s a good thing!” she shouted. “It means that I don’t have to care about what I look like. I don’t give a damn if they look at me or not anymore. That’s the best part! I just don’t care!”
I can still remember her face and hear her voice as she spoke. She was filled with an almost maniacal happiness. Her laughter filled the small corner of the restaurant where we were sitting, causing other diners to turn and stare at us.
I didn’t know what to think about what she was saying; she had always been one to exaggerate. So that night, I wasn’t sure if I believed what she was saying.
But I didn’t forget it.
What turning 50 did for me:
Now ten years later, here I am, thinking about what she said. Do I feel free? Do I not care what others think of me? What has turning 50 done to or for me?
1.Being 50 means holding on to your clothes if they still fit you because you have started to notice that all styles come back around.
Those oversized sweaters that I wore in my late teens? They came back. Those biker shorts that were ugly in the 90s? They are back, twice as pricey, and still ugly.
2. Being 50 means cooking what I want to cook and not caring if my kids will complain. My kids are now all teenagers and have much more sophisticated palates.
Even the 13 year old who referred to sauerkraut as “sauercrap” when he was little will now eat it.
3. Being 50 means being okay with my quirks and idiosyncrasies. I have been on this planet for over 50 years now, and I have noticed that everyone is odd in some way. But it is those quirks that make us unique.
4. Being 50 means that I can go out without makeup and not care. I am 52 years old and no one thinks I am any younger. So when I’m at home or when I am just running errands, why should I hide behind makeup? I don’t anymore.
5. Being 50 means I would just as soon stay in with family and friends as go out.
I think back to the times in my youth when I stood outside bars and clubs with friends in the freezing winter nights hoping to have a night that we would talk about the next day.
Now all I want to talk about the next day is what we should have for dinner.
6. Being 50 means realizing that I have fewer tomorrows than I do yesterdays. Knowing that my tomorrows are limited, I’ve decided that they need to be lived to the fullest.
For too long, I have told myself that I would do it “one day.” One day I would go to Hawaii; one day I would visit Europe and see the Italian town my dad grew up in; one day I would take cooking lessons from a chef. But I don’t know how many “one days” I have left.
Freedom after 50
So, yes, I do think I feel more free since turning 50. And, yes, I do not care what people think of me. But that does not mean I don’t care.
A funny thing happens when you realize that you have more years behind you than you do in front of you. Those feelings of self-pity don’t seem to matter so much because you no longer have time for them.
Rather, you start to care more than you ever have before. But not for yourself.
You start to care for others more than you ever have before.
For that is what turning 50 does to you. It allows you to finally break free from your own self-doubt and self-judgement to freely love and care for others without caring one single moment what someone else may think of it.
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