The Changing Face, Part 2

Y'all are too kind.

I mean, your comments after my last post about my changing face made me feel as though I'd missed what I meant to convey. That point being, that now, nearly ten years later, I appear older, greyer, wrinklier and altogether different than I did in that photo. The face I have now is not the one I had then.

Seriously.

There is a shock which comes when your face changes as mine has this past year. I wasn't writing about my crows' feet (which I'd thought were kinda cute and added character). I wasn't even speaking of the grey hair which has framed my face for years, but now glows like a neon light when I wear light blue sweaters.

No, I meant that my face has Changed. It's jumped the track I knew so long and is now zooming along the Old Lady Track, instead.

And it's when your face does that that you have to spend some real time accepting that what you've seen happen to others, you'll now watch happen to you. 

And that's where I am, still walking through the acceptance mode and not at the end of it yet, either.

Oh, I know that "pretty is as pretty does". I know, I know! But still, it's going to take awhile for me to accept that--for my life's remainder--I may act in pretty ways, but my pretty ways will be done with an aging-by-the-minute, wrinkling, crinkling, sagging face. 

Well, unless I do something about it (surgery), but as of this moment, uh, no. Not me (but I have no problem with others doing what they want).

This is one of those things you have to experience to know what I'm talking about. 

And up until this year, my 47th year, I hadn't experienced it, but I'm going through it now. And yes, everything will be all right. It well. I know this.

I'm just working my way through acceptance of the new face which, magically, somehow, appeared like a mask over the face I once knew so well.

After all, most days I feel 25 years old inside, so imagine my shock when I pass a mirror and see that odd, haggard-looking woman who appears more like 50. And I don't know about you, but it's going to take more than kind words or reassurances and more than just 15 minutes to accept that aging woman staring back at me. 

Like anything else, this is a process and all process takes time. And well, I hope I've explained this better today.


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