Separately,
the ages 3 and 5 are very young; you don’t know much at
these ages, and you haven’t been indoctrinated into the
world enough to truly have societal ideals thrust upon you.
Sure, girls are shoved into pink dresses and some have
bows tied into non-existent hair that just won’t grow, much
to the chagrin of their mothers, their pure, pure mothers who
just want them to look like girls.
And sure, boys are given lots of blue (and probably are
given the blues, too) to wear.
They both get their gender-specific toys – gotta have
Barbie if you’re a girl, and boys, well, G.I. Joe was the
“it” toy back in the day.
You were a real man-boy if you had one.
However, despite all the separation between boys and
girls, sometimes, you might have shared a room with your
brother or sister; you might have still managed to get thrown
in the tub with your baby sibling, who was the opposite sex.
Wee Wees and Coo Coos sound like things your parents said solely to make you laugh.
You were having too much fun playing, eating, and
sleeping…and starting pre-school
and pre-K to do any real research on such scientific terminology
like Coo Coo.
Three
and five added together, 8, yielded newfound thoughts –
especially in girls.
Boys still wanted to throw rocks at you or pull your
hair, and you feigned indifference, even loathsome feelings
toward them, but deep down inside, when you held Barbie in one
hand and Ken in the other and smashed their faces together to
kiss, you couldn’t help but wonder if that’s what you would
look like kissing the boy who threw sand in your eyes after
school.
When you stripped Barbie, you wondered if bumps would
ever rise on your chest, and when you stripped Ken – giggling
as you did so, you wondered if the boy would be flat “down
there”, too – and you giggled again because you just sensed
you were thinking something “grown up”.
You had probably been brainwashed through years of Disney
movies to actually have the audacity to think that if you did in
fact die from the poison in an apple you ate, your very own
Prince Charming would gallop up on his white steed, plant a kiss
upon your ruby red lips, awaken you from your sleep, and live
happily ever after with you… in his castle, of course.
Three
and five multiplied together, 15, presented an awakening of a
libido that is really too old to dwell in a 15-year-old girl’s
body. Barbie
is gone and probably so is Ken and Disney, but the thoughts that
have been infused in your brain are not.
You’ve seen enough Disney movies and have watched
enough TV and adult movies to know what a “real”
relationship is, and it’s high-time you get one of your own.
You, of course, skipped right over the dork who’s in love with you (who will, undoubtedly
become rich and hot when he’s older – totally your loss) and
will fawn over the hottest thing in the school – and he
won’t even know you exist.
You will have envisioned your cute-meet and the first
time he asks you out, and every other momentous event that will
occur in your relationship, leading up to him proposing to you just before the two of you head off to the same university.
You will have touched yourself at least 100 times before
now because you’re amazed at the breasts you have, and
you’re fascinated by the tingles you get whenever Mr. You’ll
Never Have Him walks by, totally ignoring you.
You’ll press your face against a pillow at least 237
times to practice kissing and realize the first time you do it
for real that yeah, a
pillow is so not a mouth – but at least you have
the slow-to-close-eyes thing down so when you do kiss, it’s
all dramatic and whatnot.
Your mother, your poor, poor mother is hoping and praying
that you won’t be tainted or worse, dear God – won’t have
a swollen belly by high school graduation, and although you know
what the word ‘taint’ means, you smirk just a little, hoping
somebody would taint you before you get too old to do anything
about it.
You have been awakened, and all senses are alert and
active even though you’ll have no idea how everything works or
the consequences that can arise by trying to get everything to
work.
Three
and five, when jammed together just so to make 35, transports
you into a whole other realm of consciousness.
You’ve “lived” through some things.
You made it out of your teenage years with memories full
of crushes, being felt up in the backseats of several cars, of
losing your virginity and years later, being pissed that you did
because it wasn’t all that.
You fell face-first into your twenties, thinking, I’m
an adult now, and I’m ready to conquer the world, only to
realize that you will spend a decade trying to figure it
(“it” being LIFE) out.
You panicked as you turned a quarter of a century because
surely by now, if you’re not doing everything you wanted to do
in life, then something’s wrong with you.
Your eyes begin to hurt as you look at all the pretty,
sparkly rings on some of your girlfriends’ fingers, and you
begin to assess the situation and figure out how to get one of
those and perhaps a baby (or at least a pregnancy) by the time
you hit the big 3-0.
It’s nearly imperative that you do, and you know
you’re not crazy because you’re not the only one who thinks
this is a matter of life or death.
Your married and soon-to-be married girlfriends are
fixing you up (with losers) left and right, and your mother,
your poor, poor mother, believes her arms will forever stay
barren (like your belly might) if you do not bring her some
grandbabies into the world.
You nearly break your nose on the brick wall of the big
3-0 when nothing you’ve worked for and have strategized to
achieve comes to fruition.
You are single, you are motherless, and you realize that
you are about a bus ride and three blocks away from what
you’re really supposed to be doing with your life.
Thirty-five,
yes, the connected, odd (in every way) numbers of 3 and 5, exude
a panic that is unrivaled, even by the quarterlifers who think
their lives are over when they haven’t achieved any and
everything by 25.
It’s larger than the big 3-0 because now, here at the
35, you have achieved some things, but some major, important
things are still so elusive to you.
Here, at the 35, you have either reached a goal in your
career life or you’re at the precipice of that big moment, and
you can feel it, taste it, and you revel at the promise of what
that nearly-certain milestone will be for you.
However, while you’re collecting dream careers and
accolades and pats on the backs and raises and promotions and
ambition, you turn and find no one there to hug you, to tell
you, “Good job”, to say, “I always knew you could do
it.” Sure,
there’s Mother. There’s always Mother, poor, poor
Mother, giving you a hug, telling you how proud she is of your
accomplishments, and whispering so softly only your soul can
actually hear it, “Are you ready to settle down and have some
babies now?”
The
35 woman doesn’t want to tell her mother that she’s been
trying to do just that.
That she’s been looking for someone to have a life
with. She
doesn’t tell her mother that the vast majority of her
girlfriends are now married with children and that she no longer
feels connected with them because they want to talk about diaper
rash or the new word their baby learned while all she has to
bring to the table is the latest client she nabbed or the latest
case she won in court, neither of which she can cuddle with and
love. Okay,
she could cuddle and love that latest client, but the sexual
harassment charge wouldn’t be pretty.
The
35 woman fixes her mouth to lift into a smile when her friends
set her up on dates with men who are going through their own
issues and want to find them someone a tad bit older than 3x5.
She keeps from disowning friends who suggest over breast
feedings that she join eHarmony or Chemistry.com, meet a match,
and then go on TV to talk about their wondrous love affair.
They don’t understand, like the 35 woman does, that
most people who watch these commercials are thinking, They
don’t look compatible at all.
The
35 woman fights off paranoia, fights off the societal belief
that her life isn’t complete, but it’s hard.
It’s damn hard.
It’s hard for the woman who has been brought up on
fairy tales and happily ever afters.
It’s hard for the woman who has learned to enjoy doing
everything solo.
It’s hard for the woman who still wants all those
euphoric feelings that occur at the onset of a love match, but
who feels that others think she needs to start being “more
sensible” about her prospects.
The
35 woman – too old to want adorable love?
Has she hit the age where she can no longer desire to
have someone want her and actively try to pursue her?
Sometimes, she feels that all those feelings – the
blushing; lowering eyes in coyness; butterflies in belly;
tingles racing throughout her body; the Wedding March playing in
her head; her chest burning because there are a million-and-one
things she want to say but she hopes he’ll say them first;
soft prayers to God at night for a man who encompasses many of
her wants; cute-meets; the sexy dance sequence that ends in a
passionate embrace and an almost-kiss; the first I love you kiss
in the rain; and the stalled elevator moment where she realizes
the guy actually digs her – are for the 3x5 self…definitely
the quarterlife self. She
wishes she could airbrush a good 10, 15, hell – even 20 years
off herself so that no one would laugh at the silly, love-filled
notions that flutter in her head while she grades papers, or
defends the latest scumbag, or prescribes the latest meds to a
patient.
Remember, she has to be “sensible” now.
The
35 woman, instead of having to deal with her husband rubbing her
back as she goes through yet another round of morning sickness,
scours through books of donors, picking up the perfect textual
specimen, the wordy ideal mate for her, who doesn’t want her
either, but hey, while she’s there, she can borrow a cup of
sperm and make a baby…alone.
Does she start searching for surrogates because at 35,
not 3 and 5 or 3+5, or 3x5, her biological clock isn’t just
ticking, it is fizzing out and short-circuiting?
Does she start calling her friends with babies or
collecting her nieces and nephews on the weekends so that she
can hear the small pitter-patter of feet in her home because her
belly is barren and desolate?
Does she, instead of feeling fuzzy, warm, and flushed
because of the promise of love, feel nauseated, hot, and
inflamed because of that somewhat early, unwanted welcome of
menopause, which in and of itself is so ironic because it has
been quite a pause since she had any man, let alone men.
Oh.
The
35 woman, despite the emptiness she feels, tries to raise her
head above life’s water in order to set her sight on the
horizon, on the beyond-35 border:
the 40s.
She sees in them a strength that screams, “I’m so
fabulous that I’m letting you bask in the fabulosity that is me.”
She looks over that five-year span of a bridge and
wonders what will transpire to get her to such a level of
self-confidence, of self-worth, of self-understanding.
She looks back at her first three decades and sees three
stages:
growing, being, learning and stumbling, and realizes that
this is her decade of becoming…becoming herself.
She may get the man and the marriage and the pregnancy.
She may not.
She’ll undoubtedly have people – the poor, poor
mother and her married friends – who will look on with pity as
she turns into a spinster.
But the 35 woman has to become herself and become happy
with every facet of her being so that as she travels the bridge
toward 40 she can open avenues of life that are in store for
her, and when she’s so fierce, so fabulous, so “it”,
nothing will be able to stand in her way for happiness…which
can even include all the delicious trappings that first love can
contain.
Not
only is Shon Bacon E-I-C of SisterDivas, but she is also an
author, editor, educator -- an everywoman. You can learn
more about Shon at her WordPress
page!
