Project Me!

The Middle Ages: 35

"Later, during a time when there was no room in her thoughts for anything but remorseless obsessive recollection, a perverse desire to debase the tenderness she had felt for him led her to insist to herself that it had all been a kind of fatigued middle-aged prurience. "
--Sophie Bentwood in Desperate Characters, the mysterious book that showed up at my door and made me question my sanity, on an affair at age 35, i.e. "too old for romance."

People did die younger in the late '60s so there's that. You also did everything--marry, have children...I guess that's everything--earlier too. Now millennials (who are up to age 34, by the way) are all jobless and single and living at home or with a gazillion roommates, right? We're all stunted, but youthful.
If I were to believe everything I read in magazines, I would think that every woman over 30 was paying $15,000 a pop to jump start their shriveling ovaries. The pathetic state of fertility even when drug-enhanced:  "In a single cycle of IVF, about 64 percent of 30-year-old women wound up with a child. At 35, 47 percent were successful; at 40, only 28 percent; at 43, only 13 percent; and at 44 and over, it’s 2

And yet at 39 and a half, I am being told I should stop taking birth control (I do not disagree--despite studies saying there's nothing unsafe about taking the pill for decades, it just doesn't seem like messing with hormones for that long can possibly be good for you) because my blood pressure has been uncontrollable since I've lived in NYC (and likely in Portland too--I just didn't go to the doctor) no matter how many medicines I've tried (I started what's probably the tenth different one today and am being referred to a renal specialist) and was recommended to consider an IUD since I have at least ten fertile years left. How can that be? So, are  women over 35 barren and impregnable or they should be implanting interuterine devices because of the abundance of eager eggs?  It can't be both.

If I were more reckless (apparently, most women get pregnant this way--ambivalently and without thought) I would experiment with going birth control free at 40 and see what happens. Maybe I would get knocked up and I could troll infertility message boards about how easy it was. You know, I just relaxed and stopped stressing over conceiving and it happened naturally.  You just have to want it enough. Kind of like how any online discussion of fat discrimination will attract commenters who believe that skinny women have it just as hard, that vanity sizing has made size 2 too big for them so they can't find clothes either, and how hurtful, "eat a sandwich"  remarks are.

30 Something Grandmas

Yes, 30 Something Grandmas, the reality show. That is all.

The Middle Ages: 42

"I write as candidly as possible about my decades-long struggle with mental illness, about sex and relationships, and about the difficulties of being a middle-aged poet with a lousy publication record. It’s really not a very interesting blog, in my opinion."

--Neither overtly mentally ill or a poet, I have worried about over-blogging and work. It has gotten me into trouble over the years and now I rarely write about anything deeply personal. Not sure if it's just part of the aging/maturing process or if I'm on guard.

The Middle Ages: 35

I should’ve known that the middle-ages, or rather the midlife crisis, has been the subject of scientific study.

Really, though, there’s nothing surprising about college kids thinking 35 is old. When I was in college I always cited 25 as the distant age when adult things would happen like taking up yoga and realizing I was a lesbian (neither happened).

I still genuinely believe that middle age does not begin until 45, and assumed this was common wisdom. As with many things (for instance, running the heat in the gym, office, and subway cars the second the temperature gets below 70) my ideas are different than others.

The Middle Ages: < Mid-50s

“In order to protect you from a more complicated reality, I want to pretend that droopy-fleshed women in deep middle age are lusted after by droves of men for their original and seasoned beauty.”
--Deep middle age is the new middle-aged.

The Middle Ages: <47

Winner of the creepiest opening paragraph so far in 2011:

"The first time they had sex, during that initial exploration of unfamiliar flesh, John Ross uttered words to Ann Maloney that would sound to her like prophecy. 'You have the body of a young girl.' You need a baby."

Ross was 54, Maloney 47, a.k.a. "deeply middle-aged."

I thought that I would like men sticking with age appropriate mates rather than procreating with women decades-younger, but this was not what I had in mind.

Turn On Your Heart Lights

Forty years ago on this date, Henry Thomas was born in San Antonio, Texas. I wonder if he feels middle-aged?

Cake photo: Between the Pages

The Middle Ages: 58

For women who like a nice glass of wine at the end of the day, there’s more good news: Even middle-aged women can have about a drink a day of any kind of alcoholic beverage as part of what they do to try to stay healthy as they age, according to new research.

--Go wild! Have that one glass of Pinot Grigio, ladies; you deserve it.

The Middle Ages: 41

"I wish I could transmute my middle-aged gay pain into some teen vampire drama."

--Mike Albo, author of pseudo-memoir, Kindle single, The Junket, as well as Details article, "Stop Lying About Your Age."

Age roughly determined based on this source

 

 

 

 

The Middle Ages: 40

The Bell Jar at 40: Sylvia Plath's YA novel reaches middle age.

Despite being as angsty as any teen, I never read The Bell Jar. Perhaps I should read it before next July 25th. I would hate to be seen reading it as a middle-aged woman.

Non-related: I do not think that listening to The Cure leads to Tori Amos.