“Hit” is the word since middle age hits you with the same impact as a hurricane, tornado or cyclone….It engulfs you and knocks you out! Dizzy, shocked, bereft of words to describe the feelings that suffocate your mind and weakens your body, you realize that youth is fading away from YOU! In your subconscious, you had the conviction that it only happened to others! Never mind the insidious signs creeping up to the surface of your consciousness now and then, despite your continuous denial, your resistance and your efforts to ignore them: First wrinkles, 5th white hair that you wrenched from your scalp, cellulitis where there were none, first time someone calls you Mrs!!!….Yes! You are right there, in the middle! Middle of what? Your life? You don’t feel in the middle. You have always hated the middle of anything. You’re still reeling from the time you reached your thirties!
Don’t you dare stay single!
Tick! Tock! for everyone but even more if you’re still single. If it weren’t for the constant reminders about your age from of every family relative, you would have gone on living quite happily. Needless to mention the unrelenting nagging of your dear mother who is trying tirelessly to hook you with every single, widowed, or divorced man regardless of his looks, status, age, finance or number of children he might have been dragging behind him.
Men also face relentless attacks from their family and acquaintances: blind dates, endless introductions to damsels half their age women on the outlook for an eligible bachelor/potential husband of any age who would eventually tie the knot and fulfill their dreams and providing them with the best excuse to parade the latest “catch” in front of all their girlfriends who doubted their ability to find a hubby. Furthermore, the older a bachelor gets, the more he will fall victim to sly remarks and growing doubts about his sexual tendencies. Questions are thrown his way through pensive, “knowing” looks, every time he has to justify his “still single” status, i.e. Georges Clooney who was gratified every now and then by rumors about his sexuality despite the gorgeous girlfriends who were seen with him in all tabloid. They stopped the moment he married Amal Clooney. Only then, he was absolved of his sins!
Our society has decided that staying single is not a choice but an aberration.
Married? In a relationship?
Yes! But feeling more dowdy by the minute once you reach middle age! You adore your kids but you feel as if having a family looks like a stigma whenever you go out with your single friends. Worrying about your children or talking about your trouble with the baby sitter labels you as “depassé/has been”. You envy their freedom and careless life. They envy your stability and family life.
With time, you find yourself hating more and more noisy nightclubs and late nights but you refrain from admitting it to avoid being taxed “boring, old etc..). You get the feeling that you’re tired most of the time after a long day at work and that you would rather stay home than go clubbing with your merry friends.
Are you turning into your parents? God forbid!!!! You just have to wake up early to cater to your kids needs and go to work!
Little by little, year after year you’ll realize that you have “become” your parents and you’ll remember how old, un-trendy and…borrring you thought they were. You’ll discover that you’re turning into a more tolerant adult. At the same time you’ll find that your own children are becoming more and more irritating with their “smart” remarks and “I-know-better attitude”.