I’ll be 41. Aaaaah, btw.
The reason I’m curious is because I’m a trans man and I didn’t start transition/T until I was 34 (cue the downvote brigade just for being trans; sigh. Anyway). So I feel like my aging process has been weirdly diverted by “second puberty” just as I might have been heading towards :.shudder: menopause. It’s really fucking strange to be aging while undergoing an experience that kinda feels like you’re turning back the clock.
Especially because I’ve never felt like I’ve looked the same age as my peers, nor acted it. As a kid I looked older because I was really tall, then everyone else caught up to me and I ended up not being very large after all. So then I looked young. And as a woman (or so they thought ha) that was often really invalidating and invited a lot of unwanted attention. As a man it’s, yeah, unsettling at times, how men who look young are treated. I can’t explain it, I just really didn’t know what to expect.
I’ve been really struggling with getting older…I mean who isn’t…but not even so much for the more superficial/cosmetic reasons; also just on a sort of spiritual level of feeling like I haven’t been able to “grow up” entirely, because being in such denial about my identity and then waiting so long to transition kinda hijacked that process..along with being neurodivergent and counterculture. Yet I do identify really strongly with my micro-generation who came of she during the death of analog. So it’s weird.
I’m sure this mini-essay will go whooshing over the heads of the 15-year olds just fucking around and throwing out numbers, but whatever haha.
Anyway…I don’t know, I guess I wanted to make sure stress hasn’t done me in completely over the last few years. Because that’s the other thing. I hate what the stress of poverty, being overworked, a difficult and traumatic life, etc has done to me…on top of the dystopian hell we’ve been in for 3 years thanks to the pandemic.
I don’t want to “look my age” and it’s basically because I feel cheated by how my life turned out and how much it beat the shit out of me over the years. Trauma, abusive relationship, disordered eating, drinking too much (I stopped in 2020 and only have a drink maybe once every few months now), drugs here and there, difficult and demanding jobs, physical and mental illness, and on and on.
The concussions and bruises and scrapes from skateboarding and the probably-somewhat-damaged hearing from loud concerts/drummers (musician here) I’ll own, and be weirdly proud of I guess, but I’m talking about the parts I didn’t ask for.
And on top of that, I feel like I was cheated out of three decades of getting to be who I really was…so as awkward as it can be, maybe it’s better to look younger..? Like, then I at least get to sort of have the “young manhood” I missed? It’s complicated.
Sorry. I bet I’ve made everyone so depressed. I feel like I’ll never really have an accurate idea of how others perceive me. It’s very strange. I usually try to have a sense of humor about how ridiculous it is to be growing gray chest hair after like, not growing chest hair at all, but honestly it’s the shit end of the stick for sure, and some nights it keeps me awake.
Thank you for reading, carry on… :sob: