If I could turn back time

Starting my last year in my forties hurling at warp speed to 50 it seems like.   It is so easy to fall into the woe is me "nuh huh not me am not going to be 50" mind set.

After all pretty much all media tells me I have to fill them wrinkles.  Yet they are my reminders that my eyes wrinkle when I laugh and I have laughed a lot.  A LOT.   For me the people that make me belly laugh, snort at times, tears in eyes laugh are the ones that I am most comfortable with because I relax enough to know they will eye roll at my snort and give me a tissue for those eyes.   My wrinkles are from time spent squinting at the sun at  the beach, a place that gives me inner peace and always makes me happy.  My wrinkles mark the times I tried to look older when I was younger by putting on make up that I thought screamed sophistication ... it probably just screamed at times, many things but not sophistication.  My wrinkles are not many and mostly come when I am showing emotion - like displeasure at something said, like anger when I see something that is unfair, like a smile I give someone when our eyes meet and they need a little encouragement, when the area around my eyes is lifted along with the corners of my mouth because I have locked eyes on someone who is setting my soul on fire.  My wrinkles that hug the corners of my eyes when I look upon my sons and cannot help but sigh with pleasure.  They are not defining me as older I am defining them as memory holders.  Go ahead fill the wrinkles if it makes you smile and feel good but not because someone else is defining beautiful for you. 

I hear that I should have .. I should have done this or that or worse yet that I cannot do something. That I am too old for this fashion, that length of hair.  That I cannot be silly or try certain things.  That at my age I should know better.  I do - I know better - I know that I do not need to listen to all those things "they" say because I am getting more and more comfortable with the decisions I make.  I see opportunities to try things because I no longer care as much what people think and if I fail.  I lived a life of both accomplishments and tons of mistakes, I missed chances to try and go for things because of too many reasons, I didn't demand enough of myself when it came to telling people how I loved them and let them get away without demanding that they love me as I deserved.  I should have but I didn't and I regret it not at all because instead I found other experiences, learned from those mistakes. I started painting in my 30s, blogging in my 40s, being a mother post 35 and tennis on the down side of 47.  There is nothing I cannot do because of my age or the age I will be - it is freeing to know what I want, to learn to really think about what I deserve and to know whose advice and opinion actually matters besides my own. 

In my teens I wanted so badly to be noticed in a good way, in my twenties I wanted to prove that I didn't care but really I spent so much time caring so much about what others wanted of me, in my 30s I started to embrace parts of who I was especially as I became a mother and in my forties I started to understand that the person who has to like me most, who has to have confidence in what I need is me. In my fifties and beyond I think as a woman I will be that much more comfortable in my needs, my sexuality, my asking of others to be on the trip with me and not need them to buy me a ticket.

I plan on making my last year in my forties a celebration of life and really focusing on what I want for the next 50 years.  Yeah I need reading glasses, but boy are there some cute ones out there.  Yeah I need some more medical care but I met some new interesting some folks that way.  Yeah the world is out of it's fucking mind but I can be part of the solution of my sphere of influence. Yeah my body sometimes reminds me of some of it's limitations so I can remember to take care of it.  There isn't a No, Can't in there - there are yeses of how I adjust not how to avoid. 

I am not a marathon person, not a runner, hell I don't really like exercise but I love my walks, my tennis, my dancing around the house and of course my fabulous ability to belt out lyrics and sing along as if I actually had a killer voice to go with my kick ass dance moves.   I am a woman in my last year of her 40s  -- watch out world I am ready to roll.