This is 44

The title speaks for itself. I am turning 44 today, which feels like a weird, random number. It shouldn’t, because, since January, I’ve been telling people who ask about my age that I’m turning 44, so I’ve had a while to get used to the idea. Maybe my age will feel weird every year from now on, as the number continues to grow, further diverging from my inner state of mind. It’s not so much that, in my mind, I feel younger every year (relative to my actual age); it’s that I grow more and more ageless. I hasten to emphasize that I am very much speaking of a mental state of being; my body is feeling every one of its actual years. It is nice, that: feeling ageless. It’s a kind of freedom. From the time I was a young adult until I entered my 40s, there were a lot of “shoulds” tied to every milestone. Graduate from university at this age. Find a partner by that age. Get married. Buy a house. Start a family. The clock always tick, tick, ticking. It’s a generational thing, I know — the boomers’ legacy that Gen X never quite managed to shrug off (or maybe didn’t try hard enough to do so). Now, on the other side of 40, I’ve either run out of “shoulds” or stopped giving a sh*t about them or both, because I find myself unshackled from expectations. The clock continues to tick, but it is a countdown of time to explore the world and my place in it. To go where my curiosity takes me, to live according to the dictates of my own heart. Age has very little to do with any of it.

I’m so thankful that I had the opportunity to have my portrait done by Emilie Iggiotti recently because it made me think about how I want and enjoy to show up to the world in this moment of my life. About the clothes that help me to that, and the role they play in my life. About the things I wear for myself, and the things I wear for others, and the slowly disappearing line between them. With every year that passes, I feel that I owe less deference to other people’s expectations of me. I am only at the beginning of my Crone Season. I look forward to its apotheosis; the outfits will be magnificent.

This is me, now.

I’ve always been self-conscious about my teeth, so I trained myself to never show them when I smile. Talk about censoring oneself in service of societal standards of beauty. I am so glad I trusted myself in this moment, and trusted Emilie to capture it as beautifully as she did; when I was showing my best friend the gallery of images from the shoot, she picked this one as being the one that best captured my inner light. I think she was right. It shows the joy that I rarely let other people (except those closest to me) see. Maybe this is the year I change that.

Why not 44?