I’ve been thinking about my relative absence and wondering just what this is about. The seven year itch? Nah, too early for that. Though it’s been suggested I’ve strayed too much on another site at the expense of this one. Just a little bump on the road? Maybe. Or perhaps it’s just…nothing.
I just feel like…I’ve forgotten how to blog, after almost three years (?). So recently, I crawled over to my long ignored Facebook acount and hung around–seems my whole family and more than a few former classmates abound there—and after reading Colin McEnroe’s Sunday column last week on the subject, I thought I’d go splash around in the water too.
But I’m just too wordy for Facebook. I can’t just crank out little one sentence blurbs on the state of my day, or its random hour or minute, here and there, randomly. It’s too naked. Unembellished. I feel too compelled to be clever, or jingoey, so as not to be banal, as so many of these little announcements over there are. If I’m even going to be banal or otherwise boring, let it be my way. Wordy and unedited. Inconcise, even.
So I’m back. And in not quite a foul mood, but as close as one could get to it. I feel like one of those dark, purpley days just hanging around; cold, moist, heavy and full. On the brink. Ominous. On those days, you know it’s going to storm, and you just wish it would, and quickly. On with it.
And why, maybe you ask? Or not?
Because I just got…bifocals, folks. And I want to cry. I’m going to cry. Sometime.
I knew I needed them; I swore, often, that I needed them—immediately, right now, when I couldn’t read a book anymore without my eyes feeling raked over. And now I have them—-now I’m actually wearing these fuckers, and….I hate them!
It’s not a vanity thing. Really, it’s not. I actually like wearing glasses; they’re almost better than shoes, as far as accessories go. The one thing I maybe don’t like so much about wearing glasses is the feeling that they tip my hand and fool people into thinking that I’m smarter than I actually am. Sometimes that’s not fun. If I were a doctor, that could have its benefits…I fully expect my doctors to wear glasses, and most of the time, they do. But being expected to be smarter than you are, in ways you surely are not, can be problematic and frustrating, know?
Anyway, this is not about being old, either. True, I’ve spent almost a lifetime in denial of my actual age; employing as my ruses various hair dyes, self absorption, capricious behavior, delayed life choices, and, um, a few much younger (but legal!) boyfriends. And apparently, it at least fooled my young, impressionable neices into believing that my sister T, and not I, was the eldest of my mother’s brood (thanks, T).
But sitting in that optometrist’s chair, I was casually accepting of my advancing middle age; ha-ha-ing, even, as I bantered lightly with the doctor, who looked to be about my age; or perhaps older. (Ok, I secretly feel that everyone’s older than me, in a way. In my mind’s vantage point, every non-relative I encounter is about a good three feet taller than me, and intimidating in the way monsters under the bed are when you’re six. I digress.). I was stoic and mature as I related the news to dear Mom, who’s also in denial of my age. All went well until I actually wore the specs, and, a full half day later, here I am, 43 and on the brink of full on tantrum that will monsterously outdo anything the kiddo ever mustered during her entire six years on this earth.
Apparently, this happens to almost everyone in their forties. Presbyopia. The lens of the eye hardens and it becomes more difficult to adjust and focus. Quite logical, nothing mysterious about that. I wish I could just get another lens though. Or take some magical supplement for it. Anything but this. Because the hard plastic lens I’m wearing to compensate for my defective living lens isn’t that much more flexible. And when I flutter my eye around, doing whatever I do to see what I can see, I hit a blur, and then I feel lost. In fact, that blur I hit is a metaphor for any time I’ve ever felt lost.
And that’s the problem, friends. Inconcisely, and unedited.
Recent Comments