Old Dogs, New Tricks and Ageing Bodies

a rumination

this is basically me except my nails aren’t this nice

Trigger warning: this essay details the fatphobia and ageism that live, rent-free, in my brain, aimed solely at myself. Please, if you don’t want to read it, don’t. Save yourselves.

I have just removed a very dark, very spiky hair from my chin – one of five that reappear, like Gandalf in Lord of the Rings except less welcome, on a semi-regular basis to remind me of my advancing age and decrepitude.

A note: if you are older and arguably more decrepit than I am, please, don’t take any of this personally. Though I may view myself as a past-it old hag, I weirdly don’t ever view other people my age, or even people who are older, as past-it old hags at all. I look at them and I think, “wow, they seem a lot younger than I do” or, worse, “why do they have everything so ‘together’ when I don’t?!” I know this is all subjective. In the eye of the… holder, rather than the beholder, and all that. But still. Here we are.

I’ve been worrying at that hair for the best part of a week, rubbing the pad of my thumb over it almost constantly, waiting for it to become substantial enough to be gripped by the very dull tip of my tweezers.

“Worrying at” is a great expression. Less passive than, say, worrying about something, I have been actively worrying at this hair, in a way that would cause my mother (maybe) to say, “would you ever stop messing at yourself?” although, now that I write that down, it sounds like something different.