In This Skin...

When Morning Glory first announced this week's Woman to Woman topic, she said something like, "Even if you're only twenty-eight, you're not seventeen anymore - you've aged." For some reason, that got me wondering: "If I could go back to any age I've been, which would it be?"

When I look at pictures of myself, the me I love the most is when I was four or five. A fluffy pink cowl-neck sweater and sweet shiny brown hair, all smooth and tucked around my face, a tender little smile, the epitome of childlike innocence and trust and hope. I'd like to have those qualities back. But on the other hand, I don't want to give back the experiences that have made me really value those qualities.

When I think of the ages that everyone stereotypically hearkens back to - seventeen, or twenty-something - they hold no allure to me. I wouldn't go back to my teens for all the money in the world, and twenty-something for me really wasn't all that. It's not that I don't have some fond memories of those times, it's just that I don't think I ever really "arrived" at them, or felt like I was comfortable in my own skin, before they were over and I was on to a new phase of life.

The first and maybe only time I felt really old or like time was passing me by was the months surrounding my twenty-fifth birthday. That year was so difficult on so many levels. I wasn't married yet ("old maid" by Utah standards, where I was going to school), I was "behind" in earning my bachelor's degree because I had taken eighteen months off to serve a mission (I couldn't even see at the time that the mission was priceless and so worth it!), and I had broken off my engagement and felt hopeless about where I was at and what I was accomplishing, and confused about what people expected from me and what I really wanted in life.

To a lesser degree than in that twenty-fifth year, I think I've spent a lot of time in my life being uncomfortable in my own skin, at whatever age I am. Maybe because sometimes I feel emotionally sixteen and physically eighty, or intellectually thirty and socially nine. Since that twenty-fifth birthday, though, I've tried to live more in the moment, to step back from myself and look at what I have accomplished, where I'm really at, and to realize that I'm not being graded on a curve, in relation to all the other thirty-somethings out there. Because what I really want out of age is to find my truest and best self and to be it, right then, in the moment, in the skin I'm in.

My life is not as glamorous as thirty-something is sometimes portrayed. My body is not as fit as what some people say a thirty-something's should be. (Interestingly enough, my seventeen-year-old body was close to ideal, and yet I was so unhappy with it at the time...) But most of all, I am not old, and I look at aging as more of a chance to arrive at my best self.

From a purely physical standpoint, I'm kinda proud of the new row of opalescent stretch marks across the lower part of my belly. Yes, I might feel differently if mine got dark red, but I'm lucky and they don't - they're just very faint reminders of where my body's been and where it's going. I like the laugh lines around my eyes. They show that I've laughed at least a little, even though I take life and myself much too seriously most of the time. I have a few gray hairs, too, but they're all incident to things and events in my life that I would never change.

My one hope about age is to someday arrive at an age when I feel that I'm fully all "there" - when I really feel and know the woman that I really am, when I won't pass a mirror and think, "Whew! That's what I look like?!" because the me I see in my mind's eye is so much more polished and together than the thrown-together model I see in the reflection. I'd like to come to an age when I have a firm grasp on what I am about, when the way I see me and the way people see me isn't so divergent, when I know my real strength and how far I've really come, and how young I really am in the greater scheme of things. And when I'll feel my age in the best, most all-inclusive way and finally know that I've arrived and feel free to be carefree, in this skin.

I think I just haven't lived long enough to yearn for one of the ages I've already past, because I don't . But I believe that once I do arrive at that age and that feeling, it will stay with me, no matter how old I get.

Maybe it will be when I'm forty.

Or maybe when I am seventy-five. I don't know when it will be.

But I do know it starts today, learning to love where I'm at and what I'm doing and knowing that it all makes up the me that's in this skin.

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For more Woman to Woman thoughts, skip on over to Morning Glory's Mr. Linky today and read what others have to say about being in this skin.