THE PRIVILEGE OF AGE – PART 2

I hesitated for a long time to publish the photos that follow the text of this article, simply because they reflect an intimate moment. I turned fifty a few months ago and I wanted to fully celebrate this moment with a disguised karaoke (the theme is absolutely not surprising for those who know me: “A movie character, the one you want”) followed by a dinner.

I was so delighted to reach this age that for several months I had already been telling anyone who would listen that I was fifty, even though I had just turned forty-nine.

Just to round it up.

Just to be proud of reaching this age, to feel joy about it, and to be curious to see what life has for me next.

I have heard that at fifty, we are – as women – old and ugly, but I can’t bring myself to accept it. I feel young and beautiful, and I know that it has nothing to do with the standards of today’s society.

I feel young because I feel intellectually and emotionally flexible, I am curious about everything and everyone and I decided a long time ago to get rid of the corrosive feelings of envy, jealousy, anger and fear.

I don’t compare myself to anyone because no one is really comparable and the only standards I want to achieve are those that I have set for myself personally and which boil down to the fairness and accuracy of thought and action and therefore to human coherence (this has not always been the case, I assure you: I was an unbearable teenager and a selfish young woman).

Easy to say, less easy to do. I am, like everyone else, sometimes overwhelmed by dark feelings, but it is rare and I am still able to face them lucidly and defuse them because… they are often not right, not fair and not accurate.

If I am overwhelmed by a feeling of victimization or abandonment, there is always a little inner voice that tells me that I am amplifying a current problem by attaching it to relatively well-resolved childhood traumas, because I need or want at that very moment to feast on my misfortune. The problem is in reality non-existent because I feel the dissonance between the victim role that I want to assign to myself at that very moment and the reality of my life.

I feel beautiful because I feel physically flexible. I understood that my body is changing – it’s quite normal, a woman’s body is never the same from one day to the next and is even less so during the phases of major hormonal changes that are adolescence, pregnancy and menopause. I was an ungraceful teenager, I was a distressed pregnant woman twice and it must be said that at these precise moments in my life I was particularly unhappy. I sometimes flirted with depression without even knowing it but the survival instinct guided me 15 years ago towards enlightening readings and a therapist with whom I put things back in their right place in six months.

Since then, I have experienced two separations, almost gone bankrupt, and raised two biological children and a chosen child without a penny and without a partner.

I am not complaining: I was strangely happy because there was really no other choice but to look within myself for my own source of personal joy. I was lucky enough to find it, and I know that not everyone is able to do so.

I slowly understood that the key point was not what was happening to me but how I was going to react to what was happening to me. I slowly understood that I had to stop digging in my heels, resisting stubbornly, mentally running in all directions, and that I had to just fully embrace the catastrophic situation, make the most of it and find all the viable solutions as calmly as possible.

I gained a family and friends who were very truly present. I also created a blog – a way of declaring that I was alive and that I was going to fight with my own weapons: intellectual and human intelligence.

I was talking to you about the body, but I am finally coming to the only thing that matters to me, the heart. When I look at the photo album that my sister patiently and lovingly crafted as a present for my birthday and which illustrates the person I have been since birth, I can’t help but notice my obvious physical transformation when I finally find myself – while (or precisely because) my life was a real battlefield.

It’s a long time ago now. But I have since fiercely believed in accuracy, in coherence and in perfect mental, emotional and physical harmony.

I want to believe that inner serenity can only be reflected on the outside.

I want to believe that bitterness will never reach me and that I will never have the puppet lines that vertically frame my mouth and chin.

I want to believe that I will never have the lion’s wrinkle, the one between the two eyebrows and which is often the mark of anger.

I want to believe that I will have for a long time the horizontal wrinkles that have always marked my forehead, a sign of a permanent amazement at life.

I want to believe that my expression lines around my eyes are those of my laughter and my smile – because we only smile well with our eyes.

I want to believe that my look reflects, even if it is framed by expression lines and dark circles that are constantly present (because let’s be honest, I’m tired), my very real joy of living and my kindness that is certainly empathetic but never devoid of humor and perspective. I want to believe that if people smile at me for no reason every morning on the subway, it’s because they feel this peaceful state.

I want to believe that my lips, still generous – while they are known to shrink over the years – are still so because speech is my preferred tool for sharing, transmitting and reassuring.

I want to believe that I present an image that is ultimately consistent with the person I am inside.

Am I completely delulu? Maybe, but if so, I will probably never know. And I’ll be honest, I don’t give a damn. I am happy.

I celebrated my 50th birthday with my blood and heart family. Two chosen children who are no longer children came from England to celebrate with me. My two parents who had not spoken for 40 years sang together and seemed to appreciate each other, to the point of spending Christmas 2024 together with me. One of my brothers and sisters came from La Rochelle, I know that the other two far away were with me in thought. Long-time and recent friends came, as did the father of one of my biological children and his girlfriend who has become a dear friend over the years.

I am lucky.

And I am telling myself that this article is ultimately as much for you as it is for me.

Editor’s note: You’ve seen this dress before, it’s the one I altered to look like one of the outfits Sharon Stone wore in “Basic Instinct” and to illustrate the article I’m dedicating to this film. I came back two weeks after my birthday to the same place with the same dress to do a photo shoot with my photographer – the manager of the karaoke didn’t really understand what was going on.