The 40 Year Old Project
in a few days
you’ll be shaped like this
& a bold new meaning will come. -Eileen Myles, 40th Street
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It’s not that I entered the world fully-formed, but for so long, at least if I was comparing myself to others - AND DEAR READERS, SHE WAS - I actually felt very complete, while others searched. This season is coming to an end, I am turning 40 inside of three months - and despite walking around the planet like a 35-year-old since I could string basic vocabulary together - I am, as it turns out, unforming.
I couldn’t wait to be 30 and in my 30’s my whole life. Or the maturity was projected onto me and I went with it? It felt like a real desire, it felt like a part of who I am/was/am. Me in my imagination was always 30+.
I didn’t understand what was going on in the prime-time soap operas playing in the background of my youth - the adults certain it was going over my head, and it was. But my best guess is it all started there? The choice between day-care dramas or women wearing gowns? And meeting deadlines? And breaking hearts? And exacting revenge? I will have what they are having.
Many of the stories I have heard about my youth are regarding my alleged very “strong point of view”. My mom tells me she tried to teach me Spanish, tried - but I would correct her with English words. I have unpacked much of this in therapy - the parents were the parents, they could have negotiated with a seven-year-old and I wish they had. But I know me too, and I know how we got here. They loved me and they love me but they had limits that have little to do with me and the truth is I was left alone, a lot. I figured out a lot on my own. The adults in my life thought I enjoyed this - being 35 since birth and all. And, truthfully, I decided not to bother them too much.
It didn’t help that I also looked 35 as soon as I hit puberty. (Solidarity to others in this boat, if you know, you know.) I have never been carded for a thing in my whole god-damn life. A youth spent not JUST being mistaken for my friend’s babysitter, but also for their mothers. The bad kind of attention from older men. Hiding myself to avoid it. Figuring out how to use it for my own experimentation or pleasure, I guess. I can’t tell you how many teachers I have convinced that I was some kind of assistant or peer - I did receive great mentors because of this superpower but I also used it to basically skip school once my attendance was marked.
All this to say - I had like, REALLY REALLY imagined my life in my 30s by the time I got here. Some of it manifested easily, most of it was unpredictable and now I am at the end. In a few months, I will turn 40 and because I spent so much of my life imagining my 30s I realized I had not imagined even a single moment beyond it.
Did you know Madonna wrote her Grammy-winning pop-spiritual album, Ray of Light, as she was cresting 40? As a founding member of the “recovering-Catholic-she’s-not-religious-she’s spiritual-butactualyyprobably-a-full-out-witch” collective (And so it is, my sisters), I have come to this album in recent years as a sort of personal winter-solstice hymnal collection. I mean that genuinely, I listen to it around the holiday season and in moments of reflection, and one day I finally did some research on what exactly was going on with Madonna at the time of its writing. First observation: She was turning 40.
I started trying to match other figures with 40-year-old seasons. Do you remember when Cher gave us that Bob Mackie Mohawk at the Oscar’s moment - and wore it by-the-by in response to the Academy not taking her seriously - but remember? She wore it at 40.
An ideal season for confrontation.
SO that is what we are doing here. We (I) are going to start imagining the next decade. We (I) are going to start with the 40-year-old declarations that have come before me. I am a latch-key kid, my whole personality has been formed by MTV and prime-time television. And Oprah. Why not my future too?
The ad can read: Girl seeks magical mothers - she is turning 40. And she is loose.
