I am 7 days away from saying good-bye to my 30s and hello to my 40s. I don’t know what 40 is like because I’ve never been there, obviously, but I’ve had great trepidation about it since at least three years ago. I tried telling myself today, you are the youngest you’ll ever be as a personal “carpe diem” rally. That cheap trick never worked, not even once. I also tried to swat the fear of 40 like do you a fly but there it still was, annoyingly alive and rubbing its fuzzy little legs together in the forgotten-but-never-really-forgotten corner of my mind. People have posed the idea that freaking out about 40 (or any other age) is arbitrary. I think this is true. But the fear of 40 was really the fear of life not panning out the way I had hoped, of becoming irrelevant, of turning into a has-been without having been at all. If I didn’t freak out about the number 40 specifically, the freak-out about the passage of time and having less time would have happened or will happen at some other age — 38, 43, 52 or pick any number. So what’s wrong with a good, old-fashioned freak-out at 39-going-on-40?

Well, if I couldn’t get rid of the fear that my best years were passing me by, I decided I’d fill my 39th year with whatever I thought my best years were supposed to be filled with, and then deal with 40 when it came. 39 was going to be a year of grabbing life by the balls. Or maybe just by the elbow, but very enthusiastically. I’d already jumped out of a plane, jumped into a gorge, run away to South America (okay, only for two months) and backpacked across Europe (which included sleeping on the streets of London once, for bonus points). 39 was going to have to be a little less adventurous. A few things on my Fun 39 list: get fun 39 hair, learn how to ride a bike, learn how to sing, do some public speaking, take a hiatus from work, go on an epic road trip. I know perfectly well that I can do any of these things at any age but sometimes you just need to give yourself stuff to do to get through the freak-out, you know?

The thing about Fun 39, of course, was that three months into it I had to deal with a severe 10mm disc herniation that led to short-term* chronic pain and even immobility. It was a good thing jumping out of a plane was not on my list of things to do, but even the tamest of plans had to be put on hold. That is, except for taking a hiatus from work. I planned on a two- to three-month hiatus at the end of 2013, not five months and counting. The major plot twist, though, was that any anxiety about leaving my youth — though some would contend that I’d already left that years ago — facing middle age, etc. etc. phased itself out and my mind became preoccupied with the reality of truly being incapable in all senses of the word. Once, early on in this chronic pain journey, I found myself driving home across town from a chiropractor’s office. I passed by the designer shops on Beverly Blvd. with billboards perched above them that requested our consideration for Oscar-nominated movies and casually chic people heading inside to order just the right lighting fixture for their mid-Century-inspired living rooms. I didn’t particularly care about lighting fixtures or fashion trends or the film industry, especially in that moment, but they all seemed so relevant and plugged in and I was just a ghost, out of the game, shuttling to and fro from my bedroom to yet another sterile doctor’s office or clinic. Eventually the pain got so bad that I couldn’t drive any more. My dad or my mom or someone else started to drive me around, and as I laid there on the reclined passenger seat, all I saw was sky. And telephone poles and telephone wires. And palm trees and tops of tall buildings. Maybe a few birds. Nothing that told me any more that the parade of civilization was happening right then and I wasn’t invited. I didn’t care any more anyway. I just wanted to be able to walk to the bathroom.

As the curtain was being lowered on my Fun 39 over the last six months, I spent a lot of time in bed thinking about stuff. Stuff I hadn’t made peace with. Stuff you think about when time is suspended and so you aren’t preoccupied with time-related things. Or at least not future-related things. I thought a lot about the past and where I was now. I grieved over losses and disappointments that I had amassed over the years. I wrestled with the resentment, anger and hatred that had eventually created a crust over everything. I wouldn’t be surprised if all of this contributed to the breakdown of my body even though I had a car accident I could point to as the catch-all culprit. (I’m sure that a lifetime of poor posture, sedentary habits and a diet of indulgences were accomplices as well.) To clarify, none of my losses and disappointments were special or out of the ordinary. They were just as commonplace, and just as profound, as anyone else’s losses and disappointments. Over the course of the last decade, I’d let them pile up while I forged ahead, thinking that intellectually acknowledging them was the same thing as allowing my heart and soul to grapple with them, and not realizing that the pile was actually not a pile at all but a liquid mass that was seeping into every other part of me. The truth is that my 30s had left me feeling rather tired and weather-worn. Now I suddenly had all the space in the world to sort through the mess because time had stopped me in my tracks. I made peace with God, who bore the brunt of my resentment, anger and hatred. I made peace with ghosts from the past. Body and self-image issues were put into perspective. You have to deal with yourself at some point; there is no escape.

I am driving myself around town again, though I keep my trips short and relatively close to home base. Just don’t ask me to make speedy or efficient three-point turns. Now that I can wrap my head around “normal” things again, I am noticing once again that I have gray hair sprouting out of the top of my head and that my jawline is ready to give up the good fight. As I was walking back to my car from my singing lesson yesterday (yes, that is happening), I indulged myself in the image of my flappy jowls hanging low to the ground, twisting that rusty shank of vanity-riddled panic into my gut with great relish. I had to literally take a moment before opening the car door to tell myself to get a grip. None of that now, not after all that I’ve just experienced. So, yes, some signs of the old freak-out are still there. I don’t see a foreseeable future where I will feel nonchalant about the graying of hair or the sagging of flesh. Vanity aside, it is a gradual good-bye to the image that I identified as ME. It’s hard to step aside and let a new, albeit familiar, image represent me to me in the mirror. Aside from that, though, I am about to enter into my 40s with a completely different, dare I say more liberating, perspective. I have all this pent-up energy from months of laying down and laying low. I’m not spending much time wondering if I’ll be relevant to someone else because I’ve got stuff to say and I’ve got stuff to do. I don’t have all the answers and I don’t know how it’s all going to go down but thing are going to happen and it’s going to go down, dammit! This is a random reference but I liked what the 84-year-old actress June Squibb (Nebraska) had to say when someone asked her about ageism in the film industry: “Well, it’s like anything else. I always feel, rules are meant to be broken.” Societal norms and expectations, public opinion, peer pressure — these are never going away. They are what they are and she’s going to leave them be but she’s also going to get on with what she’s doing. That’s what I plan to do.

One of the more immediate things I’m going to do — in fact have already started doing — is the 40+ Project. It’s a collection of interviews of men and women over the age of 40 that investigates, in a small way, what crossing that 40 treshold and life beyond that landmark is like. It’s a totally impromptu project that could not have been possible without the modern conveniences of social media, video chat and amateur desktop editing. And I use the word “interview” very loosely, given that the last time I interviewed someone was for the school newspaper in fourth grade when I went on a field trip to The People’s Court. The only question I remember asking the judge: “What do you do when you have a terrible headache and court is in session?” Watch your back, Charlie Rose. I’ve just begun the project so it’s hard to say anything conclusive but it’s going pretty well so far and I’m excited. I love people and I love the varied and nuanced things they have to say. I hope you feel the same way as you watch and read the videos. I’ll try to post at least one each day. I am currently editing like a mad woman. My goal is to interview 20 men and 20 women (= 40, get it?) but that’s a tall order. We shall see.

Visit the 40+ Project page to watch/read all the interviews.

* I have no idea how these things are categorized but chronic pain under a year is short-term as far as I’m concerned. I have friends who have dealt with chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia and other causes of chronic pain for years, even decades. In comparison, I have very little experience with chronic pain.

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