Survival Tools for Forgotten Women

Okay, so you wake up one day and realize that it’s a week to your birthday. You go into a panic, you rework your weekly budget to see if you can add hair colour to it, then you change your mind (it must be the mirror, you couldn’t possibly have that much gray in your hair (facial hair, I mean). And O, by the way, are those really hairs growing from your chin?

Nah, that couldn’t be either, it must be your eyesight. Oh, gosh! So now you have to find your insurance card and see if they provide vision coverage, maybe it’s time you had an eye check-up, after all. You know, just routine, nothing major. But it’s been so long since you went to the doctor’s…

Ah, then you remember what your mother taught you about the doctor’s and clean underwear etc… So you stop by Victoria’s or someone else’s Secret (they sell girdles, right?) But nothing fits… per se. Of course, for maximum effect, you should actually buy the smaller size, and then wear a girdle over it. Oh, that’s right, girdle! That’s why you went there in the first place, no? (Did I mention that this trip would be to Dr. Abdul, a sixty-three year-old lady who operates her eye clinic in a local shopping center?)

By now, a week has passed, all sorts of issues have surfaced, your heart should be beating double-time as you stare in the mirror today and confront an awful realization: you got blind-sided by a milestone. Middle age just hit you. This is major stuff; you could be depressed for weeks…!

You have just been enrolled into the club of the forgotten.

So, how do you make it through to your landmark birthday and beyond, the point of no return for you, that date you have set for yourself when you will begin to self-consciously flinch if someone refers to you as “girl”; the year in which you will assess all your accomplishments in minute detail and get a breathless, choky feeling in your throat as you see another deadline pass and, rather than meet one of your goals, nature, fate, circumstances would once again have conspired to make you drift further from it?

Come with me on a journey around the world. Actually that’s too far, let’s take a drive into a city near where you live. We’re going in search of… you!

- To be continued

Related Articles:

• Part 1 - Survival Tools for Forgotten Women
• Part 2 - Mirror-Mirror
• Part 3 - Pillow for Protection

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