week 40
My birthday is looming. I am going to be turning the age when everyone and their freaking doctor tells you your eggs are getting old and it’s all downhill from here. Yep, that’s right. I’m turning 35.
I have been anticipating this birthday for more than a year, usually with dread. Then, drifting off to sleep listening to (who else?) but Martha Beck on a podcast episode about the holidays and all the “shoulds” that come with it, I heard her voice say: “you can refuse to suffer for imaginary reasons.”
It was a weight off my shoulder, a sign to believe in, a warm blanket to cling to. Being afraid or dreading or mourning turning 35 is abso-freaking-lately suffering for imaginary reasons. It is suffering by giving any credibility to what we don’t know. It is suffering under the assumption that 35 will be a harder year of fertility for me personally, than 34. It is suffering under the imaginary reason that as soon as I hit 35 I will automatically and instantly begin declining due to some general statistic people like to use to control women and scare them into having children “before it’s too late.”
When I hear the voices (real or imaginary, but usually imaginary or stirred up in my imagination after they make one stupid comment, after which my brain decides I will never forgive them and will have endless imaginary arguments with them for hours in the shower, the car, or waiting in line at the grocery store), I can choose to counter. Here is a highlight:
Voice: You will have children too late to enjoy the ride, and you will die before you get to see your grandchildren.
Me: Maybe. And you could die tomorrow, and I could live to be one hundred. I’m not wishing you die tomorrow, but the point is that we really don’t know what is going to happen, so I refuse to suffer for imaginary reasons.
I am deciding that I have suffered enough, and that general life suffering is more than enough to suffice. I am going to therefore enjoy my birthday— and my whole birthday week, for that matter— and refuse to suffer for imaginary reasons.