Confessions From One Vain Broad to Another

Never in my wildest dreams could I have known the day was coming. Never was there a glimpse, glance, let alone a gaze lent to that covert patch of litmus flesh. How could any of us have known?

We’d been bombarded with the miracle eye creams, wrinkle plumping serums, and “cover that gray” hair dye ads since birth. But this clandestine tell tale pocket went undetected until it was too late.

This is not an "I hate my body, only youth is beautiful" propaganda post. It is however, a "woah for reals guys, this most natural thing in the world is actually uber strange" post. So if you can deal with my real...read on.

The first round of “don’t know what you got til it’s gone” debuted post childbirth, that smooth flawless taut belly skin. Love handle? What’s that? Followed by the fast fading ass to thigh demarcator, and then the “Girls Gone Wilted” post breastfeeding funeral.

How many youthful mirrored moments were spent blinking back teenage tears, all of my luscious, fresh bloom eclipsed by my war against zits? My babysitting fortune repeatedly plundered by Noxzema and Clearasil promises that never delivered anything beyond interesting smells and some red flaky dry patches.  Meanwhile the smooth supple zit free skin that covered 99.9% of my sweet lil body went unnoticed.

We all go through it cellulite, spider veins, and the general entropy of the Earth suit. Still I feel like I’m actually the first, last, and only woman who will ever traverse this human aging sojourn. Adrift in a sea of my entire generation I suspect I am alone in this. I’m the only vain broad in the bunch. Everyone else gets out alive and in tact. My bullshit story and yet…

Back to the latest shock, I attributed it to ill-fitting bras. Where is this strange textured stuff coming from? Is it my boob, arm, armpit? Is it fat, or is it skin? What is going on here? Help, someone come quick, bring duct tape, and maybe some Windex or hemorrhoid cream too.

I had over 40 years to admire my armpits, and never, not once did it happen. Hidden beneath deodorant, tucked so neatly under my arm was this lovely little spread of tidy not going anywhere epidermis. Right up until it went. I’m watching now, (call me an ageist) I’m in the know. I see the next phase, I’ve noticed how it spread down my older friend’s entire upper arms. Everyday I’m reminding myself to look beyond the armpit goo to lovingly appreciate the parts of me I’ll be wishing I had appreciated.

I want to be graceful about all this, taking it in stride as I assure all the babes around me that we got nothing to worry about. Keep calm and age on sisters? Fuck I don’t know, this is weird shit and it’s only just begun. Frankly I’m tired of some of my “ultra spiritual, love light and rainbow” peers saying it doesn’t matter, I think they’re lying. I bet deep down it makes most of us a tad bit squirmy. Can we just admit that? Everything else up until this point: heart break, child birth, divorce, loved ones passing, and losing my religion, was only basic training for the biggest challenge ahead. The slow and steady deterioration of the body I was finally getting used to, just learning to love, is the main event.

A friend of mine who volunteered in war torn countries, told me about sitting with groups of refugee women. These women had lost children, husbands, seen their entire villages burned to the ground. Once the initial shock had worn off and a state of normalcy had returned, the conversations sounded similar to what one might hear in a LA salon. “My hair looks awful, my grays are showing, this stress has given me new wrinkles, did you hear so and so is sleeping with blahblahblah” Yeah, same old tiring drivel. WTH? I only judge because I had hoped to point the finger of blame on my western privilege and having never experienced something truly worth complaining about.

Lately I’ve read articles and heard lectures about new advancements in extending human life via interesting stem cell magic and other sciencey voodoo. While this certainly appeals to my immediate vanity and the primal urge to cling to life, something else in me shudders. I remember reading some new age thoughts on growing old years ago. The author surmising the reason we age and die is because we believe that we have to. I think back to my old English sheep dog, Chauncey, lying cold to the touch. I doubt she was busy believing in the aging process, plagued with the fear that she would someday die, and yet she did. Trees, animals, humans and all of nature dies, so something new can be born. Defying that feels like more human egoic lack of foresight. BTW, the author making these claims has long since gone gray and aged like the rest of his generation.

What if this fantastic bizarre freak show called life, as grand as it maybe, is only a larvae stage in our development? This death of the Earth suit is a transition, not an ending. In my mind’s eye I see us all standing in line outside the amusement park. Some of us get through the gate, while those left in line mourn, making up all kinds of stories as to what’s on the other side of the gate. Doctrines and dogmas emerge to be fought over. Some who are in line devote all of their focus, study, and time to ensuring we stay in line even longer, as if this is all there ever is or will be. We fight hard to hold our place in line and slow down the inevitable “death march” into the amusement park.

(It’s all a story anyway, so why not this one?)

In closing, if you’re young, enjoy your armpit skin while it’s barely noticeable. If you’re moving up in the line, fuck it, wear a tank top anyway, or don’t. If it feels weird and uncomfortable to watch your body change in ways you never expected, you’re not alone. You are one of the beautiful messy imperfect humans, like the rest of us. I have no 5 step magic method to offer you, no pills, smoothies, meditations, miracle suit, or seminar. Trust me none of know what the heck we're doing, so put your seatbelt on sister, here we go. 

Surrender to the Suckiness

“Would you rather slowly reverse your outer aging process, so that each day you look younger, but you continue to feel older and experience the aches and pains associated with normal body entropy? Or would you rather continue to age outwardly but inwardly you are growing younger each day, feeling more energy, strength and flexibility?”

That question is a test of wisdom and vanity isn’t it? Someone asked me that the other day. Glad it wasn’t today.

I’ve been in this Earth Suit for nearly 44 years now. I’ve been scrutinizing it for about 34 years, learning to love it for 20 years. I’ve been in true and utter awe of it every once in awhile, maybe 2 years if I combine all those moments over my entire lifetime. (That’s being generous.)

I work with women a lot, so I hear about body issues A LOT. I can sniff em out from a distance. Takes one to know one. I’ve been to eating disorder land and back, worshipped at the porcelain bowl, mastered the silent gag and double flush techniques. I know the holy high of starving myself. I’ve made exercise a religion.

I’ve been clean a long time, yet still there it is, those occasional days when my Earth Suit doesn’t fit. No matter how I sit, stand, dress, eat, or work out, my skin is suddenly an ill fitting irregular garment. I want to trade it in. Instead I move about in the world doing all my normal functions, smiling when it’s time to smile, and I robot my way through what could be, on any other day, meaningful interactions.

My old inclination was to forcefully overcome my shit, to get frantic and really intense about fixing it. Go for a run, do some yoga, or green tea should do the trick. In the back of my mind the voice of my inner critic ramping up, so that not only do I feel like shit, now I feel like shit for feeling like shit in the first place. “You’re a fake, an imposter. All this progress you thought you were making, HA what a joke.”

The hamster wheel of hate and self-loathing is hard to jump off when it gets spinning. For all my talk of sovereignty, being of service, and self-help one truth is persistent and persuasive. What I resist only persists. The harder I fight it, the faster the spin, and greater the suffering.

Then what the hell is there to do? Nothing. Truly, I swear that is the secret oh so passive weapon.

You know how it goes, something like this: life is great, then you wake up and suddenly it isn’t. A stranger looks at you funny, you don’t get the job, your beloved forgets the plans you’ve made together, dog pees on the carpet, you lose an eye lash, a spider sneezes. Who knows why your entire reality can shift in the blink of eye, why one day the mirror is a benevolent benefactor, and the next day a pratty antagonist. Trust me I’ve tried to get to the root of this mystery. It’s a huge waste of time and energy.

I will share with you some of my tried and true survival strategies for a shit day.

1.)  Surrender to the suckiness, just allow it to be.

2.)  Take a shower, get dressed. Seriously this helps.

3.)  Permission to wallow for a day. Sleep a lot. (This is not a lifestyle choice.)

4.)  Chocolate, it helps.

5.)   Netflix. It can be your best friend in a pinch.

Yep that’s it. Let it ride. Be shallow. Let your “practice” go for a day. Remember what its like to just be a muggle.

Oh one more survival strategy: write a blog post about what it’s like to be uncomfortable in your beautiful body, ungrateful in your bounty, miserable in your health. Write about what it’s like to be a whiney a lil bitch once in awhile.

Tomorrow will be better, I promise.

PMS, Love, and rockets baby. No greater than a speck of dust, no lesser than a god. We’re only messy humans after all.