Bad at Aging

As I was being rolled into the OR for a minor medical procedure, the doctor greeted me with a cheerful, "Hey now, you're too young to be in here!" Which is definitely on my list of the top ten things I don't want to hear while being rolled into an OR, just after "Oh my, that scalpel's a little rusty, huh?"

He probably said that because I was coming in for an endoscopy after having a years-long case of heartburn, something he likely treats more in chubby middle-aged or older men than 20-something, healthy-weight women. Turns out I have a hiatal hernia, so that's one more mild disease I'm collecting slightly ahead of schedule.

I'm 27. I recognize that I have no right to talk about aging, and yet here I am ready to do so, and here are a few reasons why:

1. Every year on my birthday, I look up the age I'm turning, just for giggles. For every age, there are listicles about why each age is awesome, and blog entries about what makes year ____ so great. At 26, those articles leveled off, and I came across quite a few titled along the lines of "Life Lessons I Learned by Age 26" (I guess 25 was rough for more people than just me). Last year, I looked up "age 27" and the first thing I found was a gaggle of neuroscientists claiming that to be the age at which "brain decline" begins. Immediately after, at least a dozen sites about the 27 Club. 
2. Last summer, my father-in-law noted the swirl of gray hairs on the back of my head. I played up being offended as a joke, but I think about it every time I get a haircut and find ever larger numbers of gray hairs in the fallen trimmings. (An update since I started this blog entry: The other day, as Kelsey and I were driving to dinner, she looked over at me and helpfully commented on how the grays were particularly prominent in the slanted evening sunlight.)
3. One glass of wine is now sufficient to leave me dry-mouthed and achy the next morning.
4. If I don't wear concealer under my eyes, my coworkers ask if I'm tired, or whether I'm feeling alright. 
5. I get excited about making pot roast.
6. I play sudoku while I poop.
7. I officially feel out of place in the Juniors section of Kohl's. 
8. I relate more to the parent characters than the teenage characters in shows and movies, despite my "babies" having four legs and a (marginally higher) propensity to crap on the carpet while company is over.
9. I had to call AT&T support last month because I couldn't figure out a problem I was having with texting. What's worse is that I couldn't even describe the problem I was having, and I could hear the woman on the other end gradually dumbing down her explanations to a bar just slightly above "elderly woman with early signs of dementia and no email accounts."
10. The sign on the self-service cashier machines at Kroger say to have your ID ready if you're buying booze and "look younger than 27."
11. I've reached a 50/50 probability of being carded for alcohol. Which isn't such a big deal, except Kelsey is almost always carded. Granted, she could claim to be a high schooler and get away with it.
12. Meaning, I could not claim to be a high schooler and get away with it. Between the black goat beard on my chin that I shave at least once a day and my spoiled milk complexion (with Grinch green undertones and Simpsons yellow highlights), I'd blend into a high school hallway about as seamlessly as Steve Buscemi. 

Source

Now, I don't know if you picked up on this subtle characteristic of mine, but I get real existential real quick. I don't mind being psyched about going to bed early, and I'm actually getting into the idea of being a premature silver fox, like my grandmother was. What makes me nervous is the possibility that I've very suddenly entered the "all downhill from here" section of my life.

Like, did I mention that neuroscientists think mental decline starts at 27? Oh no, I did, didn't I? IT'S HAPPENING.

What if my healthiest days are behind me? What if I start collecting illnesses with the same reckless abandon with which I collected Pokemon cards not so long ago? What if I have to start asking younger people how to use the Facebook? What if I don't get sexy silver hair, and wind up with the yellowed smoker's 'fro of an old biddy who plays the same slot machine for 10 hours a day?

On the other hand, what if finally looking my age (or even a little older) makes me a more confident businesswoman? What if I'm chugging closer to the life stage in which I've learned many of my biggest, most painful lessons, and am able to be a better, more considerate person because of it? What if I'm developing into the sort of person who could be a mother to more than just a couple of weird Chihuahua-monsters?

For a long time, I've been afraid of getting older, but now, Peter Pan is turning gray, and I'm not even that worried about it. The world gets bigger and bigger, and I learn more and more. I'm excited to live each stage of my life, rising to new challenges and reaping new rewards.

And for those of you rightfully rolling your eyes at the under-30 rugrat fretting about aging, what advice can you share with me as I squint at this screen and wonder if I'm ready for reading glasses?

Anti-Death Spray

Recently, as I was avoiding chores by digging through my laptop's archive of fanfic- UH I MEAN my totally legit unfinished pieces of fiction, I came across a document with a weird title: Anti-Death Spray. I didn't recognize it, but the date stamp claimed I edited it in 2017. 

My arms got kinda tingly. At last, my life was taking on the elements of a psychological horror anime, just as I'd always dreamed.

As soon as I opened it up, however, I remembered it.

At the top of the page, instead of "Anti-Death Spray" followed by the unraveled mysteries of the universe typed in Wingdings font, was this phrase:

"Things I love:"

Followed by a 42-item list.

The 42 things I love fit on one single-spaced page. The list starts with the blessed givens: Kelsey, my family, my friends. My dogs. Corn dogs. The big, obvious, right-out-the-gate things that I cherish. 

Then it gets a little funkier, and smaller.

Pokémon. Cool jackets. Sitting around a fire. Being the big spoon.

When I say funkier and smaller, I mean it. The last item on my list is "Diet Coke paired with cheddar cheese." Which is silly, and debatable (if you want to debate it, though, be ready to catch these hands first). Putting cheese and low-calorie cola on a list of beloved things seems like kind of a stretch.

But I remember when I first had that thought, back in high school. Yes, specifically this thought: "Heck, this block of cheese that I'm consuming as if it were an apple (not that it matters to my impervious 16-year-old digestive system) pairs very nicely with this Diet Coke."

I was stressed out at the time. I know this because I have been continuously stressed out since I was a zygote, and have cycled through various degrees of denial for the subsequent 27 years. The cheese and soda snack was fueling a study session for my upcoming finals. Rather than absorbing information, my brain was preoccupied with forecasting my inevitable, world-shattering demise. It told me I was going to fail my tests, and never go to college, and never get a job, and rain shame upon my family. And that all sounded reasonable to me, so I didn't question it. (Believe it or not, I got even worse at handling anxiety from there, to the extent that in the worst throes of my adulthood anxiety, I didn't consider my problematic teenage thought-patterns to be anxiety at all. But you already knew that, because I post about my mental health circus about once a month, partially because I want to normalize conversations about mental illness, and partially because of my compulsion to overshare on the internet.)

Anyway, high school me with the flawless internal organs of a god, eating a slab of sharp cheddar and sipping Diet Coke from a can. The savory tang of the cheese balanced by the mellowed, false sweetness of the carbonated drink. I told myself that there would be a time that I could have this snack again after the tests, whether or not I passed them. There were still things in the world to enjoy.

I passed my exams. After all, I'm a neurotic overachiever who had a dissociative meltdown the one time I got a B in college (and it was in Drawing 101. DRAWING ONE OH ONE.)

Things have improved tremendously for my head in recent years, but every so often, my defenses are breached. During one of those times, I wrote my list of things I enjoy and will enjoy again, like the company of my spouse, and the smell of a bonfire. 

And, like a total weirdo, I named that list "Anti-Death Spray" and trolled my future self into thinking I was in the plot of a gritty magic-realism video game.

There is a lot to be afraid of today. There are many opportunities to feel worthless. But there are also camping trips with your friends, and used bookstores, and really cool candles. Maybe there's pain ahead, but someday, you'll have your cheddar cheese and Diet Coke again. 

In the style of my favorite 90s public television Science Guy: "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a love list to add to."

Some News for Yous (& Ewes?)

The "ewes" was supposed to be an Easter joke, but I, uh, kinda missed my ideal date range for that. But you know me: I have never in my life deleted a pun, regardless of missing context, poor taste, or shear ( ;P ) reach. 

Yeah, I'm only a little sheepish about that last one. Hope I don't get lambasted over it. 

ANYWAY, now that that's over with, I have an event coming up!

BOOK FAIR BOOK FAIR BOOK FAIR! This Saturday, April 14th, from 1 to 4 pm! At the super fancy Carmel Clay Public Library! It's truly a gorgeous building... that I may or may not have gotten lost in when I applied for the fair, but you know, whatever. 

I have some new table goodies to give out that I drew myself. I put three of the heroes from Necessaries on bookmarks, which you can get by answering a question about what sort of hero YOU are at my booth. I already posted the full bookmarks on my Facebook page, but here are my initial sketches of the super-ladies:

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(Hopefully the email version of this blog doesn't blow them up to terrifying proportions like it usually does with images... Anyway, from left to right: Eleanor Bellamy, Adelia Romero, and Polly Hilton.)

I'm really excited to have something new and interesting to bring to book fairs. It would mean the world to me if you stopped by, and even more (like, TWO worlds) if you took one of the bookmarks. 

I hope to see you there! :D 

Essay: Hyacinth

Someone brought a planter of hyacinths into the office earlier this week, and I've dreamed of my old church for the past three nights.

The powder-sweet smell infiltrated my subconscious, I think. Of all the senses, smell is said to be the most closely bound to memory. Did you know that losing your olfactory abilities could be a predictor of Alzheimer's? Sort of gives another dimension to the phrase, "stop and smell the roses."

I don't need to stop for the hyacinths. They sit above my desk and rain their scent down on me all day. I'll forget it for a time, the way you lose the clean bite of chlorine after a few minutes at the pool. Then, out of nowhere, I can smell them again, so thickly that I inadvertently visualize a fog of yellow pollen coating my sinuses, lining my sticky air tubes, clinging to the wetness of my lungs.

The smell delivers me into the sanctuary, sitting stiffly in a pew, trying to hike up my pantyhose without causing a scene. Glossy black flats bite the backs of my heels. My coat is in my lap, because even though it's Easter and the sun is cutting through the tall windows and threatening to burn the right side of my face, frost had grayed our yard this morning.

There is a problem with the way my memory works. The smell of hyacinths took me to church, but I did not see the purple fireworks of petals on the altar ahead of me. I felt burning sunlight and blistered ankles. 

Not only that, but the memory always spirals off, into the Sunday school room where the smiling, dismissive teacher explains the sin of homosexuality, describing queer people in an abstract, alien way. He says, "there are people out there," not realizing that there are people in here, in his room, trying to love without sacrificing their eternal life. 

But I say nothing.

A friend speaks up, questions whether love could ever be something that deserves damnation. The teacher asks if my friend has something to tell us, and it's a joke, and we're a room of high schoolers, and when the teacher laughs, we laugh.

My friend leaves. I stay. I regret this for years, and I think of it when I smell the hyacinth that should remind me of the arrival of spring and other joys.

That's what my brain does. It shoves aside the good memories as it dives into the depths for the dark and shameful ones. It does this at night as I process my day, repeating and repeating every conversational mistake, every occurrence of unkind thoughts, every real or imagined expression of disappointment from others. It does it when I smell sawdust and remember crying in front of a room of art students because it reminded me of my dead Pappa's barn. It does it when the heat draws up the bitter scent of asphalt and I'm transported to the second before I fainted in high school marching band, collapsing under the drums I'd insisted I was strong enough to carry.

Only with great pressure does my brain retrieve the rest of the memories.

Every kind word I share with my friends, every time I make them laugh. The shrieking joy of invading Pappa's workspace and striking him square in the back with a Super Soaker, of seeing his smile before he's even turned around. The drumline instructor jabbing a finger at the rest of the line and saying:

"Look at her! Look at how hard she works! Look at what she can do! Don't you dare let her down!"

The memories are there, down where the light can't always reach. I have to deliberately draw them up.

So do you.

There's a memory I keep under a glass jar, fending off any darkness that might force its way in. 

It's summer, and I'm on an island in the Great Lakes, peddling a rented bike on hard-packed sand. I'm alone, but in the kind of way where I'm at my most whole. I tour a winery, and I'm too young to drink, so instead of wine I sample Catawba grape juice with a powder-sweet taste. 

I ride past the vineyard that grew the grapes I drank. Rows and rows of vines and bunches of unripe fruit, green clusters of pearls. Hot wind shuffling broad leaves.

I reach the far end of the island and lay the bike against a dune, among hardy purple flowers. Ahead of me, water that could stretch to the end of the world, flecked with sails and diving seagulls, blue and white and flashing. My heart aches, like some force has reached from the lake and into my ribcage, grasping my soul, pulling me forward.

Barefoot, I flinch at the coldness of the water enveloping and then retreating from my toes. 

I walk in, step by measured step, the cold dulling as my skin numbs. The bottoms of my shorts are wet and clinging. An errant wave pushes me up, swallowing my hips, then pulls me further out from the shore. 

I smell the sunscreen washing away from my arms and the damp organic odor of aquatic plants baking on the sand. I smell the green of summer foliage and the fragile perfume of flowering weeds.

I breathe deeply through my nose before I sink beneath the surface.

Bad at Spirituality

In second grade, I co-founded an onion grass-themed cult. The schoolyard was overrun with tufts of the tall, curly-topped, subtly bluish grass, which were obviously much more appealing playthings than the surrounding swings, slides, and monkey bars. Who could resist plucking out the bulbs and smelling the pungent onion on your fingertips?

We centered a loose religion around the harvesting of the grass. We spoke a simplified, arguably racist language based on dropping out certain sounds and cutting unnecessary words, resulting in chants of "onee-gas, onee-gas" and quick, chirrupy gibberish. As a priest of this order, I officiated worm funerals and encouraged the construction of onion grass bracelets. Using dandelions, we painted personalized patterns on our faces. Our God of Onee-Gas smiled upon us for at least a couple weeks, until our religious fervor was overpowered by the arrival of Pokemon cards on the playground.

Sometimes, after a mower shreds a patch of onion grass and releases that green scent into the air, I reflect on the bizarre peace that my first cult experience granted me.

Most of the time, I feel out of control. Lots of folks probably share that feeling, especially those who suffer from anxiety or depression. It's like life keeps dropping plates out of the sky, and I'm supposed to catch them before they shatter, except I'm on a unicycle and there are live bears chasing me and someone is shouting "BOO, YOU SUCK" from the ringside and that someone is also me. It's a one person disaster circus out there.

Inevitably, human that I am, I drop plates (and wine glasses, and Christmas ornaments, and text conversations because I'm a Pretty Bad Friend sometimes). There's a thing that happens when you drop a lot of plates, or even think you're dropping a lot of plates. You can develop "learned helplessness," which is the perception that you have no way of escaping an adverse situation, so you shouldn't even try. Fail enough, and your brain gives up on finding ways to avoid failure, since it seems that nothing you do has an impact on the final result. Things are bad, and will always be bad, and you have no control over that, so why bother?

Logically, you really should bother. One of the early experiments in learned helplessness (conducted by Dr. Martin Seligman, known for his impact on the field of positive psychology) featured administering electric shocks to dogs (yeah, I know). By jumping over a barrier in an experimental box, dogs could avoid the painful shock. After a few rounds of this, the dogs learned they could jump over the barrier to safety before receiving the jolt in the first place. 

However, if the dogs had previously received inescapable, unpredictable shocks (YEAH, I KNOW), they didn't even bother with the barrier. They might run around a little, but then lie down and give up. And they'd do this over and over, until the dogs made no motion to escape when the shocks started, even though there was the option of hopping over the barrier. 

Even on the occasion that a dog so conditioned did jump the barrier, and discovered safety on the other side, it would go back to its passive acceptance of the shock in future trials. That's how tightly the sense of helplessness locks to the brain.

And if that isn't the saddest thing, then you can get right the heck out.

There's a reason the concept of learned helplessness is tied to mental illnesses like depression. The real or perceived absence of control hinders your ability to get that control back. How unfair is that?

My relationship with onee-gas gave me a sense of control in a chaotic world. Like I've mentioned once or a thousand times, I was(am) a super weird kid. Making friends could be difficult. Reading situations was even worse. A more socially savvy kid might have seen some downturns in friendships coming, but I was blindsided every time. I was dangerously blunt, and hurt people's feelings without realizing it, and that created complicated, painful friendships full of pranks gone too far and unintentionally mean behavior. Plus, unabashed weirdo that I was, I was ripe for mocking, and it took me too long to even know the extent of my ridicule. 

As an acolyte of schoolyard weeds, though, I had a specific role, and the authority to be weird, and a set of rituals that calmed me.

I've always liked rituals. I used to have a specific order for saying prayers, and compulsively finished with a song I'd learned in Vacation Bible School (composed of saying "hello" in about 10 languages, which I added to all the way through college). I tapped a specific rhythm when shutting down my laptop. I counted sidewalk lines on my way to classes. I ate certain meals in a complicated order, originally for luck, but eventually just to avoid inevitable bad luck.

I don't have the same rituals any more, and they never interfered much with my life. I've learned other ways of overcoming my sense of being out of control. It took a lot of trial and error and for a while, those errors were ridiculously unhealthy. 

But I've found a weird way of reintroducing that calming control, and all it took was revamping my dusty and long-disused spirituality.

Of course, I'm not the type to take a yoga retreat or revisit the Good Book. Oh no. I'm getting in touch with my spiritual side by declaring myself a witch, and here are a few reasons why:

• I already have a crooked nose and unladylike hairs on my chinny-chin-chin
• I've been called a witch before, in that you-know-what-I-really-mean-when-I-say-witch kind of way women (and those who appear womanly) are called sometimes, and I sort of liked the image of me cackling in the woods somewhere, surrounded by cats and the bones of my enemies
• I look suave in a pointy hat (by the way, the tall hat and iconic broom were actually taken from beer brewers in the Middle Ages. Making beer was "women's work," and one of the few ways a woman could be an entrepreneur. So of course the Catholic church took notice of these women making moolah, got all pouty, and started demonizing them. Like, full-on bringing back the idea of witches specifically to weaponize the concept against all women. Having filled society with the notion that women are corrupt and prone to devil-worship and unfit for business, the men of the church moved in on the market and claimed it for themselves, cutting women out of one of their only means of accruing independent economic power. The repercussions of stripping women out of their pre-1300s healing and brewing roles continue to this day. Isn't that heckin' interesting, and by interesting, I mean infuriating.)

Alright, fine, I'll get a little more serious. I realize that there is a practice of modern witchcraft, and while I'm borrowing some ideas from that, I'm making this my own thing, all about positivity, spreading kindness, and gently correcting my own negative behaviors. 

Some tenets of my witchhood:

• Creating sigils as meditation and self-affirmation: Sigils are symbols created to embody an idea, like, "I am smart and capable." You turn that into a drawing, repeating it until it's completely comfortable, a visual mantra. You can discard it, set it in motion through a ritual, or keep it as a reminder.
• Conducting rituals to assist with visualization: Mental rehearsal leads to improved performance in both mental and physical tasks. However, I can find it difficult to focus my intent, so creating a ritual as simple as lighting a candle and speaking a phrase can help get me in the right mindset.
• Being mindful of my environment and my fellow creatures: I can often get lost in my own head. I'm making an effort to notice my world, both the good things within it and the parts I can improve. I must direct goodness out into the world through acts of kindness and compassionate corrections of my negative impulses.

What has scared me off of spirituality in the past is a focus on organized religion or a specific supernatural belief. For where I am in life right now, I simply don't know if there is a world beyond the physical one. I like the idea that there is, but I don't know that I believe it. My spiritual practice, however, is one based in positive psychology more than actual spiritual belief. Even the bits that border on mumbo-jumbo have the placebo affect going for them (and placebos can work even when you know they're placebos).

Ideal. Source

Maybe I won't be riding around on a broom (or a Hoover) any time soon, but I do like the idea of calling myself a witch. It's sort of the spiritual equivalent of saying I'm a "nasty woman." It's restoring the strength of something broken, and that's the sort of effort that my heart is here for.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a worm eulogy to deliver.