Aging

When you just can't go through it any longer...

Photo by Wolfgang Hasselmann on Unsplash

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On the morning of my thirtieth birthday, I cancelled my appointments and walked up the great hill that looked out on the town.

It was a dry, brutal heat, the kind that coaxes chaparral to burn and turns skin into leather.

I took off my shirt and lay back in the sharp husks of dead grass.

The sun shone through my eyelids as an angry, pulsating orb. It hurt and I moaned, though no sound came out, as my throat was dry as bleached bone.

In the late afternoon, a vulture began to circle. I ate a handful of weeds to keep myself alive and wept out the last of the moisture in my body.

When the sun finally set, I sat upright. I felt my face—yes, the deed was done.

In the encroaching darkness, I shuffled down the hill. I could see the house at the bottom with its lights on, with my family inside.

I found I wasn’t scared to greet them, but eager. Now there was no more waiting; no more fearing the future.

I hobbled through the neighborhood, bent like a crone. I was so thirsty. I would go home and open the fridge and throw out all the accursed skincare and sunscreen I kept in there—I wouldn’t be needing all that anymore! I’d go straight for the rotisserie chicken and tear it apart with my knobbly, blanched fingers.

I laughed in glee at what was to come!

My neighbor was taking her dog for a twilight walk.

“Joanne?”

She began to hurry over, then she froze in shock, and took a step back.

“Oh my god! What happened to you? You look…”

“What? I look what?”

But she hurried away, pulling her yelping dog behind her, as I cackled in the moonlight.

Oh, how she pitied me! But she should envy me.

For indeed, it was over. The vanity. The need to be perfect. The gift of a youth and the curse to spend my whole life maintaining it.

I was old!

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Bye bye! ‘Til next time!