Thirty five

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I am thirty-five years old. But I honestly don’t know when I stopped being 25. When I look back, it’s like the last ten years are blurry and yet filled with so much clarity. Make sense? Maybe it doesn’t, I seldom do. Besides fine (and not so fine lines), gravity playing havoc with parts of my body and a few grey hair, age to me, like my father loves to say, is just a number.  

And I thought long and hard about this while grappling with this new number that now defines me as a thirty five year old woman. What does that mean? Do I need start dressing different? Should I fight the urge to say ‘that’s what she said’ at let the sexual innuendos pass without so much as a smirk from me? Should I organize play-dates with tea and cake instead of wine and pizza? Should I stop taking selfies and looking for perfect filters that will make skin glow and teeth sparkle? Should I talk slower and gesticulate less? Should I not about my boobs and orgasms at public places? Fuck that. I will forever be inappropriate, even my number is  88 and my teeth are fake and tits wrinkled.

But also, how can I be thirty-five when I still throw tantrums with my mother? I stomp my feet and hold my breath. How could I be  thirty five when I’ m a teenager when I sit with my friend’s staring intently at instagram stories and talking about mental nights and nursing I am dying, I just did ulti on my pillow hangovers. How can I be thirty five when I feel like a child  when my daughter and I make up dances and songs, colour outside the lines and laugh wildly at nothing at all.

So I am not 35 at all.  I am what papa says, I am as old as I feel.

It’s about how I feel during moments that have woven my life together, creating my story, one stitch at a time. And not every stitch is perfect; in fact so many have come apart... but the number thirty-five has taught me that it’s perfectly fine if they do.