Almost But Not Yet

L.C. Hill

I hate being forty-five years old, and I’m not even forty-five years old. Almost but not yet. I’ve never stopped doing that thing that kids do. If you ask a kid how old they are, they’ll tell you they’re almost ten. Or they’re eleven and a half. I’ve done it my whole life.

I’ve never lamented getting older. I couldn’t wait to be thirty. When I was twenty-nine, I started telling people I was thirty. Almost but not yet, I’d say. I didn’t mind turning forty, either. I was even fresh out of the end of a long marriage. I was single at forty. Well, except for the post-marriage-buffer-all-the-pain guy. But, basically, I was single at forty and it didn’t bother me at all. I’ve never cared about my age.

But not at forty-five. I hate it. But you’ve heard that already. It’s not news to you.

If you haven’t reached this age, you are in for a treat. I’m not menopausal. I’m perimenopausal. I’m not old. But I’m not young. I have the occasional hot flash, but I still have cramps. I get wrinkles. I get pimples. I’m happy-go-lucky because I’m not worried about the trivial shit I was worried about all through my twenties and thirties, but every couple of months I’m full of—and I mean exploding with—rage. I’ve never been full of rage before. Not ever. Not even at the lowest points of my life when I had every right to be full of rage.

But I don’t have any reason to be full of rage now. My life is good. I have a good life with good friends, a roof over my head, food in my chubby forty-five-year-old belly, and a dog that brings me more joy than all of the human population on earth. But here I am boiling with rage.

Forty-five is a limbo really. A mid-point. Literally. Well, not literally necessarily. I could be halfway through. Or, I could be two-thirds of the way through. Or, I could be five years from death. That’s another fun part about being forty-five. You don’t know. People my age drop dead. A little ache could be a sore muscle from pulling on that sock earlier in the day—in the middle of July—because your feet are cold even though it’s ninety degrees outside. You could turn down the air conditioning but then you’d probably die from overheating because your ovaries are shriveling.

Or that ache could be cancer. There’s no telling what it is until it’s too late because you could go to the doctor for every little thing, but you’d be there three times a week and after awhile they’d just think you were the crazy hypochondriac and they wouldn’t test for cancer anymore because you’re just crazy, and then you’d die of cancer.

Wow, that was a long sentence and I’m winded. Because I’m forty-five. Almost but not yet.