My Body, Myself
Living in The Over 35 Body
By Carey Ravenstar Robin
Copyright © 2014 by Carey Ravenstar Robin.
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Hormones
Chapter 2: Dating
Chapter 3: A Map to My Body?
Chapter 4: I Want to be a Redhead
Chapter 5: My Body at Work – AKA brain cell death
Chapter 6: Children
Chapter 7: Being a Late Bloomer
Chapter 8: Getting in Shape
Epilogue
About the Author
Chapter 1: Hormones
I’m sorry to inform you that hormones may take over your life at some point in your 30s, especially if you are a woman and somehow forget to have children. I know you think, not me, not me. I’m going to be just fine. I’m not going to be anything like those moody, chocolate-addicted, tummy pouchy 30-something women that I see wearing baggy shirts and bobbed haircuts in the line at the grocery store. I’m not going to have two cats and frequent knitting goods, bead, or crafting supply stores on Saturday afternoons. And I am most certainly not going to go to some embrace-your-body belly dance event wearing a colorful scarf around my head.
I thought all that too, Dear Reader, and yet here I am, recuperating, as we speak, from one such dance event. I used to think, hey, I’m like a size four and I get my period like once a year. What could go wrong?
Despite all that, something has gone very, very awry. Apparently, if I would have had children, my body would have reset itself. I did not learn this in health class, and I really want to write a letter to my 8th grade health teacher to ask her why she kept this important fact from us. I learned more than I ever needed to know about fallopian tubes and eggs that it turns out I’m never going to use.
But I suppose she assumed we would all remember to have children. It was, after all, before the “you can have it all” feminism of the late 1980s. I learned about the reset button from my gynecologist. But since I didn’t have children, I’m now stuck on freeze, just like your computer but there’s no control, alt + delete for me. I make too much of all the hormones you could possibly have, some I’m sure you don’t even know about. But not to worry, my doctor assured me.
I just have to avoid the following: milk, soy, processed food, corn oil, vegetable oil, chocolate, alcohol, vinegar and coffee. There are plenty of root vegetables that I can eat, and of course, fish oil, some salad greens with lemon juice and olive oil only on them, and grass fed beef or chicken that I should really raise and kill in my own backyard. If I do all that, I’ll be cured in no time flat. Oh yes, and I must work out like seven hours a week. That will help too, my doctor told me.
This inevitably led to me cutting my hair into a bob because, honestly, who can stand to do their long hair twice a day – once in the morning, and once in the evening after the workout? I have grown my hair again, and now it just looks greasy and out of place at some point in the day, because I refuse to wash it twice. I simply cannot spend an hour or more a day on my hair, especially considering the farm animals I need to start raising myself. Speaking of hair.
Be prepared for unsightly hairs that come out of nowhere on places they shouldn’t be. Like your chin. No one warns you about that either, not that having a warning would have helped. You wouldn’t believe it could happen to you.
My recommendation is that you buy several tweezers to put in all your purses, workout bags, and of course, your car. The sun is unforgiving, and when you go to check your eyeliner or lipstick or whatever, one day, you’ll see the wretched little hair where you never, ever though one could grow. But that isn’t the worst yet. The worst is the endless waiting for a period. It’s like waiting for Godot, except there are all sorts of omens to convince it’s really, really almost here. Really! Just one more day, and it’ll be here. . . okay, one more day . . . maybe tomorrow . . . three weeks later, in the middle of a workout, you have to run to the bathroom.
Sometimes something even worse will happen, and you’ll bleed all over your partner, ruining the moment in a way you never thought possible in your 20s. That’s pretty much how your life is going to be in your thirties, so if you’re in your 20s, live it up while you still can. Soon, you’ll be spending your days feeling bloated and moody and eating ridiculous amounts of chocolate that you aren’t supposed to eat, waiting around to get your period while you obsessively check the mirror to make sure a full beard hasn’t grown in while you were sleeping.
I have stabbing pains in my lower sides, especially when lifting heavy groceries. I asked my doctor about this too. She gave me lots of tests, one of them involving drinking 40 ounces of water then waiting and entire hour to pee, during which time a lady rubbed gel all over my stomach and told me to never ever drink that much water again because I have a miniscule bladder. Nothing else has stayed small on me, but apparently my bladder has, wouldn’t you know. I won’t even tell you what else happened during the exam. It’s too shocking for a PG-13 book like this one. She surmised the pains were from scars on my ovaries, the origin of which is unclear. “Don’t worry, it’s completely normal,” she assured me. I suppose the fact that these stabbing pains are normal should make me feel better, but it doesn’t. I just keep thinking one day, they’ll figure out I had a rare disease from the Third World all along and the tests were wrong. But what can you do?
I suppose nothing was more embarrassing than the day I had to have my vagina hooked up to a computer. I know you are going to read that sentence twice. Yes, really. I am not making this up. Something that can happen when you are too flexible, which too many hormones can cause, is joints don’t stay together in the way they should. For me, this led to an inflamed pubic joint. Did you know you even had a pubic joint? I sure didn’t, and wouldn’t you know, it is a very important joint. It pretty much holds your whole body together.
Don’t think because you’re a man this can’t happen to you. It can. It’s called pubis osteitis and soccer players get it. You can Google it if you don’t believe me. The only cure is lying around for a year or two and taken loads of Advil. I’m not a soccer player, but bizarre things seem to happen to my body. My joint disrupted everything, and I had to relearn to use my vagina properly. I didn’t even know I was using those muscles in the first place, but apparently I was using them without even knowing it. This doesn’t surprise me, as I’m the type to ask where my glasses are when they are already on my face.
My doctor presented me with a tiny white thing that looked like a miniature version of a computer mouse. I will not tell you where I put this mouse, but I bet you can guess. The mouse had a sensor in it, which meant I could see everything my vagina was doing on a graph on a laptop computer. I had to learn how to get the numbers on the computer to move up and down if my body was ever going to work correctly again. Eventually, I learned how to do that, and now
I just email my vagina every once in a while to check on it.
All in all, I suppose things could be much worse. I only have 15 pounds to lose, and I’m confident that one of these days I’ll be able to survive a few weeks on the root vegetable-freshly killed backyard chicken diet my doctor suggested, and then I’ll finally shed those pounds. I have a full head of hair on my head, and I’ve heard of women who lose their hair. That’s got to be bad, but I supposed if it happened to me, I would just wear the accept-your-body-dance-head-scarf all day long. And if nothing else, I wouldn’t have to worry about washing my hair twice a day or getting a cliché middle-age bob.
Chapter 2: Dating
I don’t mean to sound like your mother, or my mother, or anyone’s mother, but I beg of you: get married before you turn 30. I know you think you have all kinds of important things to do. I know you think you need to go to grad school, get a career, get all set for whatever you’re supposed to be all set for. I’m here to tell you that nothing of importance is going to happen to you until you’re at least in your mid-30s, maybe later, and very
possibly never. I know you’re thinking, what does dating and marriage have to do with the title of this book?
Well, if you are aware at all, you would know that the title of this book is a play on the title of a 1970s feminist book called Our Bodies, Our Selves. That book was written for women by women about their bodies and about women’s sexuality. A book like this was necessary because male doctors had taken over everything about being a woman that they could and turned it into a medical issue. I feel that the feminism that started in the 1970s went in the wrong direction, and it left most of us women single and broke. So I say, in these times of no employment or health insurance, it’s even more important to get married while you can. I know you think you are ahead of your time, a feminist, and a career-woman, or something like that.
Someone must have forgotten to inform you that the vast majority of CEOS and businesses in America are still owned by men. So unless you start your own business, you’ll basically be working for a system that hasn’t changed much since before the women’s movement. I have thus far not worked for a single place that offered childcare or flex-time. I don’t see how being a wage slave means you’re a free woman. You may as well get married.
I know you’re thinking that you just aren’t in love with anyone. Well, look a little harder Emily Dickenson, because time is a’wasting! If you are a man and are reading this, read on. I waited too long and all the good ones my age were taken. This resulted in me eventually deciding to just go younger because ones my own age were hopeless or burdened with debt, ex-wives and children. There were a depressing lot of them who owned bicycles instead of cars and claimed they were environmentalists (oddly not a one of them owned so much as a plant, nor went to any environmental rallies, but I digress). Before my acceptance that I’d just have to find someone younger, I tried to stick with my age group. It was a wasteland that T.S. Eliot would have been proud to write about. The rest were men over 35 who not only managed to fail to marry, but failed to get a good career going as well.
You’d think there would have been one or the other, seeing as we women often say we’re waiting to marry until our careers are set. I’m not certain what they were waiting for. Apparently, they’d been sitting around all through their 20s and 30s playing video games, reading and writing depressing poetry, or drinking alone in bars. These, Dear Reader, are not the kind of men who are going to buy you birthday cards or flowers, much less bring you a cup of hot soup when you are sick.
And for those older, single men reading my books, this will be you. You will be alone in your no-plant apartment with not even a cat or goldfish to keep you company. All your drinking buddies will be married, and you’ll be watching re-runs of Curb Your Enthusiasm. I know you think you are the exception, but I assure you, you are not. I don’t care how much meditation you do, how many great poems you think you are writing, how you’re learning to be a better human being by growing hydroponic vegetables on your balcony, or how many weight lifting classes you take, you too will be one of these weird men. So cut back on the pot, the beer and the poetry, and look a little harder, I say.
I know you’re thinking that I’m a total hypocrite because I am not married. That’s because nobody wanted to marry me. Well, there was that one IT guy I worked with who only spoke Russian, but I’m not counting him. He already had a wife.
Supposedly you can have a fulfilling life as a single person, as many married people will tell you. Don’t listen to the married people. They are all thinking about those few good times they had when they were single, and they no doubt remember them incorrectly as they were inebriated when they were happening. And let’s face it, you can’t do in your 30s, 40s and beyond what you could in your late teens and early 20s, no matter how much you’d like to think you could. There is one way and one way only to have a fulfilling life as a single: inherit loads of money or write a best-selling novel and travel the world.
The rest of us spend all of our measly one person salary on rent in a sketchy neighborhood at best and microwaveable meals at Trader Joe’s, scrimping for our weekend vacation alone in Wisconsin. So for those of you who are rich, I say, take however much time you need. Anyone wanting to live above the poverty level, get moving.
Chapter 3: A Map to My Body
There are a lot of things that can go wrong with your body, and most of the less serious ones have gone wrong with mine. I have learned that a few drug store items can cure many disorders: Epsom salts, fennel, ginger root, apple cider vinegar, regular vinegar, Advil, Asprin, hydrogen peroxide, witch hazel and coconut oil. I would not eat or slather yourself in all of these at once, however. And I’m fairly certain hydrogen peroxide is toxic if swallowed.
Since I’m not a doctor, I can only tell you that these ingredients can cure many ailments, such as ingrown hairs, ear infections, body itching, muscle aches, stress, sleeplessness and stomach aches. Use Google. I did. As I age, I find out about more and more disorders that I have. I have so many disorders, that at this point, it literally would be easier to reclassify me as something other than human and just say that these disorders are native the newly discovered species to which I belong.
For example, let’s say I call myself a Biddle-boo and not a human, then I could say all Biddle-boos have off-kilter feet, weak pubic bones, poor digestion, constant ear infections, mood swings, and infrequent periods. I could march for my rights as a Biddle-boo and ask for better chairs, special shoes at discount prices and even extra holidays that we Biddle-boos celebrate. I could get calendars and tote bags made in my name. I could say, hey, Biddle-boos have a culture that requires them to take five full days off a month to deal with their various issues.
A few months ago, I learned that I have a rare foot disorder, called Morton’s Foot. At first, I refused to accept my diagnosis. “I can’t have anything else wrong with me,” I thought. “Besides, a wacko New Age massage therapist told me I have it. What can she know?” But I kept developing these painful calluses on the soles of my feet between my big toe and whatever the heck the toe next to it is called (I used Google for this one, and would you believe nobody knows what that toe is called either?).
I finally caved after I found myself walking on the sides of my feet, like an off-kilter ballerina, and I Googled Morton’s foot. I then purchased special shoe inserts for $120, and within three months the painful calluses were completely healed. They had been there for several years, so I was forced to conclude that I suffered from yet another rare disease – Morton’s Foot. Do you know that only 10% of the human population – at most – have a second toe that is longer than the big toe?
The Greeks thought that all goddesses had longer second toes, and so all their statues have them. I also read somewhere that 90% of serial killers have a longer second toe. I’m not sure if I believe that one, but to be safe, don’t make me angr
y. I wonder if 10% of the human population is suffering from sole calluses in silence. Where are the public service announcements, fundraisers and plastic bracelets about this? I want a foot-colored ribbon to wear. I want a Facebook page.
I’m always asked to donate money to save breasts and prostates, but what about these calluses that are destroying our feet? I was limping around for years, suffering in silence. It’s the little things. No one ever thinks a callous is going to hobble you.
Chapter 4: I Want to be a Redhead
I deeply feel that my entire life would have been different if I had been born a redhead.
There are several obvious reasons I want to be a redhead, but in case they are not obvious to you, read on.
1. I could avoid all outdoor activities taking place between June and August, claiming redheads can’t be in the sun. I hate summer, and you are only allowed to hate the sun and summer if you are a redhead.
2. Having a fiery temperament would be expected. Now I’m left explaining that I’m 25% Sicilian and that’s why I yell so much when I get angry. First of all, no one believes I’m any part Sicilian. My skin is as white as snow, though I do have dark hair and a prominent nose. Second, no one knows anything about Sicilians, and Italians don’t even consider them genuine Italians. It would be so much easier to just point to my hair, and honestly, I doubt I’d even have to explain.