This Is 35

This morning I read an article on Huffington Post, This is 38. It didn't sit right with me. Not because her reality wasn't truthful, but it was so different than my own reality. So, on the edge of my 35th birthday, I thought I'd write my own version. (And, a note to the grammar police, I decided to write 35 instead of thirty-five.)

This is 35

35 is rejections you thought would be over by now keep coming. It is losing the job that looked so impressive on paper. It is realizing that you hated your boss anyway. It is wondering where that perfect job you worked so hard to have will jump in your lap. At 35, looking towards 40 is much more appealing than looking backwards at 30. Being 25 sounds awful. Getting carded is no longer fun; it’s just confusing. 

Being 35 means leaving your old life and starting another. It means ex-husbands and anger. Missing children and sadness. It means that being the First Wife is a much happier life than being the Forever Wife. 35 means finding the friends you only dreamed about, feeling comfortable in your own skin, and learning you don’t have to talk to everyone- especially the ones you dislike. 35 is the great art of saying no.

Happiness is nothing like you imagined it. Sorrow is more likely to come from the days and days without your children than being stood up for a date. It also means that you still stay out late with your friends, drink too much sometimes, but feel much worse with a hangover.

35 is learning the curves of someone else’s body. It is the kind of confusion you missed in your twenties because you were already married. It is wondering if you’ll ever have another baby because time is ticking away and you can’t wrap your head around someone new and baby-worthy. It is waiting for the other shoe to drop. It is cowering and crying and praying that next fight won’t come with silence, punishment or cruelty. 35 is not knowing what better looks like.

It is nights on the couch drinking wine with your best friends. It is brunch and bookstores. It is wondering why your new girlfriend doesn’t realize turning the heat up to 75 costs a crazy amount of money. It is breathing deeply, so you don’t get mad.

35 is letting your daughter sleep in your bed and overindulging your son with inappropriate video games. It is staring at wife number two unable to see why she is appealing. It is the realization that you wasted too much time worrying about the pretty girls. It is knowing she is nothing like you. It is wondering if he secretly hurts her too. It is hearing your three-year-old call some other woman mommy because she’s too young to remember life without her. 

It is wondering what you ever saw in him. It is a door slammed in your face. A fight on the lawn. It is a judge. It is battles. It is freedom even when the freedom feels hard and scary.

It is seeing your parents in a whole new light. It is losing your last grandparent. It is arguing with your sister about your childhood and laughing at your ridiculousness. It is a large empty house that echoes when you walk. It is paying teenagers to shovel your sidewalks and jumping your car with your own cables.


It is wishing you hadn’t waited so long. It is bringing women together. It is knowing you aren’t alone. It is staring death in the face and living life anyway. It is numbness and madness. Desperation and exaltation. It is wonder and relief. Pain and chaos. It is shame and the need for forgiveness but not knowing where to start. It is desire and redemption. 

35 is trying to figure out who the fuck you are and striving to find who you want to become. Because becoming isn’t over. Becoming is just beginning. 35 isn’t old. It isn’t an ending. It is just the beginning of joy.

Comments

  1. UnknownMarch 2, 2015 at 6:25 PM

    And if I may add my own observations to your searingly raw description, Shosh... It's not being afraid to bare yourself publicly, risking judgement and criticism. Despite everything, it's doing it the only way that you can...authentically. It's fraught and slippery and wondrous and All Yours.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sara and BradMarch 3, 2015 at 11:06 AM

    Hey Shosh -- I appreciate the rawness and honesty of your post. I much preferred it to the original Huff Post one!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hanging

Image
For years, I taught Elie Wiesel's Holocaust memoir, Night , in my community college classroom. Night  is the story of Elie and his father's life inside the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps during the Holocaust. It is spare, heart-wrenching, and honest. He tells the tale of a people moved from humanity to degradation and the unraveling of relationships caused by such inhumanity. Many times, broken relationships were that of fathers and sons, but they were also broken relationships with G-d. Elie struggles to hold onto his relationship with his own father while, at the same time, despairs over the violent breakdown of his relationship with G-d. While teaching, my students and I found ourselves stopping at the same passage: A young boy is arrested and hanged by the Nazis for not giving up his superior who was planning a revolt. The entire camp stood helplessly by as they watched this young boy die slowly. While death surrounds them everyday, the boy's death b
Read more

Resurrecting Levine

Image
This story was part of a writing challenge proposed by my American Jewish Lit professor in grad school. After reading Bernard Malamud's short story  from 1955, "The Angel Levine," about a Jewish black angel who saves an old Jewish tailor in order to get his wings.  The story looks deeply at Jewish identity, posing the question: what makes a Jew?  In turn, my professor asked, "where did this angel come from? What was his life when he was alive? Was he born Jewish?" Resurrecting Levine I grew up during the Harlem Renaissance, the son of an entrepreneur who made his money opening speakeasies in Jungle alley. Jazz musicians, homosexuals, bohemians, and upper class whites flocked to his establishments.  In 1926, when I was four-years-old, we moved to a Hamilton Heights brownstone. At the time (although much has changed) Hamilton heights was a desirable neighborhood for affluent whites, and my father’s success with his speakeasies sprinkled throughout Harlem
Read more

Jealousy's Funeral

Image
I'm staring at the coffin, plain, wood, filled, when she walks into the sanctuary. I can feel her as her heels pad softly against the flat brown carpet. The weight of the air shifts. Particles gather around me, closing my throat. All I can smell is my wife on her clothes. It's as if their pheromones mixed together just to taunt me. My body heaves forward. I try in vain to blow out stale fearful air, but her presence suffocates me. The word lover whispers in my ear from some unknown voice as I tightly close my eyes. I'm sure the congregation thinks I'm holding back tears for her. I am. I'm not. I don't know. I've never felt jealous in my whole life. I've never understood the nights my wife would cry in our bed or on the floor because she felt I was keeping some dark secret. For her, jealousy lived just under the surface, a constant threat to our marriage. Her crying pissed me off so much; I fantasized about hitting her, just to shut her up. Every time I
Read more