Back in the days when we actually bought and wrote on physical birthday cards and gave them to people in person or mailed those to them, I remember writing on every single birthday card this (at times, even those intended for children): “With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.” Shakespeare had written that. I thought it was so funny. As in, haha funny. Ah wrinkles, what is that! So far away.

And then it got slightly less funnier when the wrinkles did start showing up. Ever so creepily. My skincare routine is less than 90 seconds on any given day and that includes brushing of teeth (on rare occasions I buy nice stuff after watching skincare routines of famous people in their overpriced bathrooms on You Tube, and then give up on them after a few times when I don’t see magical change overnight) therefore, it is not common for me to do the whole “Mirror, mirror, on the wall…” routine on a daily basis. But one day I had the time and inclination to do so (because in my country, Bangladesh, people randomly comment on your physical appearance in vivid details after staring at you for much longer than they probably should, bordering on invasion of privacy), and while reflecting on my appearance after one such episode, to my utter horror, for the first time in my life I properly noticed my neck lines, the dark spots on my face and neck, the lines on my forehead and around my eyes. I dashed out of my room to look at my Mom’s face (because for daughters, our Moms are the blueprint of how we would age) and I discovered that my Mom has aged a lot more gracefully than I have, and her Mom had done so even better! Since then, once in a blue moon, I would find myself googling anti-wrinkle moisturizers (word of wisdom, just use normal moisturizers, and save your money, because what you put on your face won’t slow your ageing, rather your lifestyle and your diet and good company around you and good mental health status might). In my case, it also didn’t help that I have lived in countries where temperature in some was minus 10 degree Celsius (most of my time there was no heater) and then some others where temperature hit at times 50 degree Celsius (you could fry eggs outside) often without any air con. Basically, my hair and skin have been utterly confused for last 15 years.

I fondly remember the day I realized that I had entered the Middle Aged Club without even knowing it. I was in Afghanistan for an assignment. It was the year 2019 (the pre COVID-19 era…important distinction, particularly since COVID-19 aged most of us by a few years at the least, and if ain’t showing on our faces, it definitely did a number on our organs). I had turned 35 just few weeks earlier, and I thought I was still ‘young’. One day I and my team in Kabul were working on a grant proposal for a youth-focused project. The international NGO I was working for at the time had little to no experience on implementing such projects, which entailed construction of sports clubs ! But we were desperately fundraising to keep our operations going, so we were trying for anything and everything. In order to write that grant proposal, we first had to find out what age group even is “youth”. My Grants Manager came to me and told me after his extensive research, he had found the definition of African Union to be the most reliable one. On their website it said: “For the purposes of this (African Youth) Charter, youth or young people shall refer to every person between the ages of 15 and 35 years.” I remember asking him: “Do they say what happens after 35?” My staff (nearly a decade younger than me) just looked at me and replied, “Ermm, no, it doesn’t.” So I deduced that after 35, we become middle aged.

When I told this to one of my childhood friends: “Hey, did you know we become middle aged after 35? As in, we are at middle of our age! As in, at the mid point of our lives.” She replied: “Oh, you wish! Have you forgotten what life expectancy of people in our country (Bangladesh) is?” Indeed I had forgotten. As per Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, the average life expectancy in Bangladesh even dropped by six months from 2020 to 2021 (huh, did COVID have something to do with it?). Women apparently still outlived men, but even then most women are apparently looking at death at 74!

So I have been Middle Aged for several years now. I am now 40. And I have yet to have a Mid Life Crisis. Who knows, it might even come when I am no longer Middle Aged, as that is a recurrent theme in my life, for things to happen way out of pattern or sequence or sync. One of the reasons could be that my entire life has been a series of some small and some big crisis. Basically, it hasn’t an easy-breezy life (whose has?). It also helps that I am from one of the most exciting cities on the planet (Dhaka), folks in my family and extended family haven’t had easiest of lives either, and my chosen sector of work (humanitarian response) that I have been in since I was 24 years old, is essentially 24/7 crisis management for most part. Therefore, it seems crisis has been integrated well into my life since my so-called youth, therefore Middle Age does not necessarily seem to generate additional Crisis. So when at 35 I realized that my Middle Age has arrived, I did not feel the need for some earth-shattering and / or pocket-denting adventure. I just kept on living life as I was before I realized I was Middle Aged.

Also, you know those list of things people post on Buzzfeed or Medium and other platforms, articles such as: “Things you realize when you turn 30” and then ‘Things you realize when you turn 40” (and bizarrely, the lists stop after that age)…I had basically been experiencing most of  those things since my 20’s.

However, while you are at peace with being Middle Aged, the rest of the world isn’t. Our own society or community surely can’t leave us at peace with just ‘growing up.’ “Live and let live?” Whoever has heard of that! For girls and women in my country, we are shoved into a ‘no longer young’ category while we are still quite young. This perception of premature ageing is not surprising for a country where more than half of all girls are still being married before the legal age of 18 (UNFPA) and where many 60-something-year-old men are able to marry (and have married) girls young enough to be their daughters or even granddaughters (not even as the first wife). We don’t even have the luxury to be Middle Aged. We just straightway jump from young to old.

And then there is of course the perception and politics of going grey. It is like a global assignment to comment on women’s greyness of hair (Richard Gere and George Clooney can be grey and hot, women somehow cannot be). Even up until few years ago, at salons in Dhaka, once the staff had already asked me if I wanted to do some skin-whitening treatment or the other, the next point on their agenda would be to convince me to color my hair (my Mom and I used to get into huge fights in salons as she would insist on me coloring my hair, and then she eventually gave up when she realized us fighting in public was not good for the family image). One time, at a well-known beauty salon in Dhaka, while I was getting a hair oil massage (which is strangely called ‘Indian head massage’ in some Western and African countries for some reason), I felt some slight pricks on my head while I was browsing through my phone. I turned to my left to find a thick bunch of my grey hairs collected on a bowl. The salon staff had been plucking them (very deftly and discreetly) one after another without my consent. I didn’t complain about her, I just didn’t go back to that salon (she genuinely had thought she was doing me a favor, and probably reminiscing about her plucking grey hairs from her Granny’s head back in her village home). However, if that lady was trying to pull this stunt now, at my current state, believe me, I would be half bald ! My head is nearly 50% grey.

A decade ago, I was in Nairobi, talking to the branch manager of a certain international bank (I was negotiating with her to let me withdraw funds from our INGO account held at the same bank but under a different branch in South Sudan, where civil war had erupted a few weeks earlier, and we had limited access to our funds). During our long conversation, I found her staring at the top of my head, then she would turn to talk to me and then probably felt like she needed to have one more look, and she would resume watching my head (it was almost like this banker lady was trying to count the number of grey hairs I had) … for the first few minutes, while she was doing that, I was actually on a whole different page and was panicking that may be there was some chocolate wrapper or food stuck to my hair!

My Dad said to me very seriously one day a few months ago that if I followed his lifestyle and eating habits and attitude to life, I would not have grey airs. My reply was: “But you have almost no hair!”

I have had more male colleagues offering me hair color (that they personally use) than my female colleagues. I have had random strangers on streets ask me “where did I get my highlights?” Then I have also had strangers walk up to me and tell me how brave or how courageous I am and people telling me randomly “Never change your hair!” They often seem to be delivered with a deep almost-political hidden undertone and I don’t quite know how to respond other than “ermm thank you.” And then when I saw whole articles being written about how this or that Hollywood celebrity is not coloring their hair and going ‘bare-faced’ publicly (as in, wearing no makeup), making it seem like they should be given awards or something (such a ‘First World’ issue right?), one cannot help but think that, ‘folks, we are not fighting wars, we are just making some personal choices which should not have any impact on your life or anyone else’s whatsoever. And by definition, shouldn’t ‘natural’ be the norm?’ Of course it isn’t, not when it comes to people usually with two X chromosomes.

There is more written about Western women going grey and bare-faced than about actual women around the world fighting and surviving wars and saving their families and community members often at the cost of their own lives and bodies, as in, about actual heroes. It is remarkable how feminism in one part of the world is about equal pay and equal rights and right to be pro-choice (not so long ago women in these same places had to fight for right to vote and to have credit cards separate from their husbands) and to wear or not wear makeup and to go or not go grey, whereas in other parts of the world, women still are fighting to stay alive and not be married of as children and be mutilated as a girl child and for everyone not to assume that her body belongs to everyone else (especially during times of disasters and conflicts / wars) and that her honor is not her entire identity, to be able to study and then work (by choice) and enjoy her financial freedom, to be recognized as a human at all. I don’t know if women in latter category would ever catch up those in former in their lifetimes. I hope they do. I hope we do.

When one of my family members asked me for the umpteenth time (with of course good intention each time) why I am not coloring my hair (earlier comments had ranged from “no man will propose marriage to you” to “you will die alone”…), this time I just felt like going for shock effect (COVID-19 had removed my capacity for ‘sugar coating’ things to people), so I simply replied: “when men assume I am older than I am, they bother me less on the streets or on public transport or at random places, and I feel much safer in general as a woman.” He just went quiet, and that was the last time he ever brought up my grey hair. In hindsight, I gathered that it was not about hair color for most part, it was just that my grey hairs were a reminder to him of not just my mortality, but also his, and this person had literally known me since birth.

I’ve only colored my hair once in my life. It was for my cousin’s wedding a few years ago, and that too after my uncle had made a vague threat that if I didn’t color my grey hair, I may be uninvited (I think he was only half joking). I loved my little cousin so I did color my hair. I regretted it instantly. While showering during the first few days after the hours-long coloring sessions, to me it had felt like I was not touching my own hair but jute, and over several subsequent showers, the hair color kept washing off, and over next few days, I just watched (a little scared) as the hair color kept changing with smells of chemicals. I wondered how on earth hundreds of millions of women around the world do this process each day, and if that was the norm, then am I not the one who is ‘not-normal’ (trust me, I have a country and then a region and then a world full of people doling out judgements in that regard already)? For months afterwards, people around me had kept telling me how nice I looked (‘your face looks so bright!’ meaning I looked fairer) and yet I could not wait for the colored hair to grow out so that I could go back to my black – grey hair, back to feeling like my older self. Also the thought of coloring my hair to maintain the ‘non grey / non -old-ish’ status for the rest of my life was a major turn off for me. It became clearer that I needed to like me and how I looked to me, more than others did. If that is not the norm, it is fine by me. I am the one who has to live with me.

On another note, I have been so properly Middle Aged since my youth and for so long that I didn’t even know I was a Millennial. I thought Millennials were people a lot younger than I was, and with a lot more ‘issues’ than I had. On a very hot afternoon in Djibouti (from where I was providing remote support to our office in Aden, Yemen), I was joking with one of my colleagues (a European guy 10 years younger than me) about him being a Millennial and how people of his generation were all entitled and overthought and overanalyzed things and such. He then told me: ‘Well, you are Millennial too.” I thought he was insulting me. And then he googled it and showed me, and, would you know it, I was indeed a Millennial! I just went quiet after that. I also realized some of the jokes were right on the money and yeah, man, they did apply to me too. It took a few years  but I am finally an old Millennial, and thankfully the focus is now on Gen Z and Gen Alphas. Good luck, kids. And, on behalf of all people older than you, I would like to say that we are utterly sorry for what we have done to the world, to this planet, and your future. Yeah, we indeed do suck.

Following are some examples which remind me of being Middle Aged:  

• I literally have got no more passwords let me in. I have lived too long for so many password changes. I literally cannot think of any more ! Just hack me already.
• While booking trips for vacations, I would skip through hostels and head straight to hotels or Airbnb (I feel very grateful that I am finally able to afford single rooms, and not have to share 1 room costing 10 USD per night with 10 strangers). And then every time I check into a hotel, I would ask for rooms in ‘quiet’ corners (the hotel staff would then take a cue and not even bother telling me about the nightlife and social party scene of their area).
• When I saw a capsule instead of a private room at my hotel in Ljubljana last year, I had to stand back and wonder for a while how on earth I would crawl in to and out of it (and thanking God that they hadn’t given me the upper bunk which would have required me to climb a slippery weird ladder which would have inevitably resulted in my fall and an emergency visit). Every time I see stairs, and I am intended to climb down them, I do a quick risk analysis inside my head to assess my chance of falling and what I should grab onto in case I do (I had a disastrous fall in Medina (Saudi Arabia) nearly 2 decades ago while my cousin and I were running down the stairs to catch the Maghrib prayer jamaat (she tried her best to break my fall, but I kept slipping out of her fingertips like a newly caught fish!). If I had that same fall now, I know I would hospitalized.
• During 2017 whenever I was in Kabul (my duty station was Ghor province in central west part of Afghanistan), I remember partying till wee hours of the morning on several occasions. Two years later when I went back to Afghanistan again for work, at one of the Kabul parties (this time it was at farewell of one of our expat staff) it hadn’t even been midnight when I literally just lied down in sheer fatigue on the floor mattress with guests dancing all around me and I fell half asleep. One person asked one of my staff behind my back: ‘how old is she?’
• My metabolism has been on decline since my mid 30’s. I kept waiting for the 5 kgs I gained during my Baltic tour in 2022 (I ate big full breakfasts each day (something I didn’t back then) which included fish (people eat fish for breakfast there!) and I just basically never lost that weight, and now they have made what seems like a permanent home in my body. Apparently stuff like this will keep happening.
• For the people I have nominated on my will, I often wonder what they will do with the money after I die. I am tempted to even provide detailed recommendations.
• There are days I feel like I can conquer the world and do so much for so many (and attempt at solving world hunger and gender inequality and socio-economic inequities and all that), and then there are days I just want to retire, and hibernate for an extended period of time, hobble away to a wood cabin away from civilization (the kind where you should not go on your first dates), and not have to do anything, especially dealing with the many problems I am expected to solve on any given day.
• My short term memory and attention span have been on decline (I will not even insult goldfish here). My long term memory is scarily good (scares others more than it does me) and yet I cannot even recall why I had opened the fridge or why I had opened a web browser or why I was standing in front of someone in the first place (I would recall what I was there to say usually minutes or at times hours later). Basically the stuff that my Mom started doing since her 50’s and that I used to make fun of, I had started experiencing them since my 30’s (my Mom has gracefully never even said “I told you so”). Several people (most of them not even qualified to do so) have diagnosed me with ADHD. I still don’t know if I have it or if I should tell them that I had blanked out when they were speaking because I did not find what they were saying to be all that interesting, and there is only so much pretending I can do on a given day (esp. in post COVID – 19 era).
• On my newsfeed on Facebook and Instagram, I keep getting ads for “How to Dress in your 40’s” or “Dating for Mature Adults… it is never too late to find love”, or advertisements for collagen boosting supplements or anti-ageing foods or yoga / pilates for the elderly (exercise without moving much, or exercises while holding onto some wall!). I also get daily updates on fertility and pregnancy quizzes and news (trust me, I never googled these), with testimonies from women who had children successfully in their 40’s. There is a free quiz that teaches you exactly how to boost fertility fast, with picture of an adorable sleeping Asian child with a Caucasian mother named Kelly !
• Since I turned 30, randomly people have been telling me to my face (including strangers at airports), when they found out how old I was: “Ah, you are not THAT old!” Old for what? I guess I will start asking from now on.
• There is a trekking company in USA which even puts age limit at 38 for many of their treks (I had looked them up in my late 20’s during the only year I had ever lived in USA (based in NYC) and last time I checked (which was few weeks ago) they are still using that age limit!). So that ship has sailed for me. It is ironic that just when you have enough money to be able to afford such multi-week treks / hikes / tours, some ageist company tells you that are you too old if you are past 38! It is downright ironic.  
• While I had finished reading ‘East of Eden’ in less than 2 days, and “Anna Karenina” in less than a week and “A Suitable Boy” in less than a month (these are some of the  biggest books on this planet, in terms of page numbers), it now takes me weeks to finish one single book (at times, months). I often read one page and then think for 5 minutes. Because I lived a bit and I travelled a bit and I can relate too much now. I got too much perspective. As a result, I am the slowest reader than I have ever been. However, it also means I feel words more strongly than ever before. And that’s nice.  
• As one grows older, it is generally easier to accept that people who were adults when you were kids are just humans and were also figuring out their own stuff back then just like you are doing now. And it is not easy for anyone. Just as it isn’t now for you. That is one big perk of being middle-aged. You humanize those around you, starting with your family. And you realize who to be really mad at. I have evolved from blaming my parents for everything that has ever gone wrong in my life, to now blaming global leaders causing wars and hunger and greedy corporate thugs and profiteers of wars and conflicts around the globe, where innocent civilians lose lives for only the rich to get richer (and man oh man it is mostly always people of color dying anywhere and everywhere, and has been for as long as humans can recall…), and yeah, I am also mad at Mark Zuckerberg.

To me it seemed that while mid-life crisis for men could manifest in different ways, including existential crisis, depression, dissatisfaction over unmet dreams and goals (family, work, or both), marrying someone way younger than you, buying sports cars (for the rich dudes), going to space (for the richest dudes), etc. however, mid life crisis for a lot of women does not seem to be a crisis per se. I feel it turns out to rather be a a resolution of an existential dilemma: of what really does matter, of who really does matter, and the realization that you can put yourself first (world will not cease to exist if you do), of reaching a point in life when you can finally care a bit less of being everyone’s everything, of meaning a bit more to your own self, of keeping some time and space of yours to yourself and not to be given away in chunks or have it be taken for granted… most important of all is the realization that you no longer need validation from so many others anymore, that you never did, that you don’t even need as many people around you as you thought you did before. With that, I hope the realization too comes that you have always been enough, that you are fine the way you are. And to believe it finally. And not care if anybody else does or need to. We just had been wired to think it does since we before we were even born.

Speaking of not giving power to others to validate you, trust me, you should see my performance appraisals at work! I look at them, take what I need to for my self – growth and try do my job better and manage and lead my teams better, and I move on. I don’t get too moved by the good stuff written there, and I don’t lose too much sleep over the not-so-good stuff written there (basically you could be doing a thousand things right and one or two things will be held over your head still) and I also realized over 15 years ago, when I started working in the aid sector (where mostly white folks sit at decision making chairs and tables) that as a woman of color, there is no way to win…you are either “too less of X” or “too much of Y”, and when often times your performance appraisals are being written by people working in organizations where most people in the highest of places are far removed from your lived in experience, what they think or feel about you needs not always be a reflection of who you actually are or what you are actually trying to convey and do. There often will be instances of you not being understood. You could be called ‘loud’ or ‘aggressive’ or ‘controlling’ by merely just opening your mouth to speak. And the good thing about growing older is, you just don’t care as much. My work-place mantra since my 30’s has been: “You don’t need to like me. But as we have a job to do together, we must give each other the respect as required and we need to be civil to each other for not just our sakes but also others’. If we cannot do that, let us speak to HR or senior management. Otherwise, let’s act like mature professionals and focus on our work (which is lifesaving response by the way!), and oh, I don’t need to be your ‘sister’ for you to respect me.”

An excellent perk of being Middle Aged is also not caring to be so damn nice (my people-pleasing desire and capacity was in any case lower than average of that of most others, but in my youth days there was still an element of wanting to appear ‘nice’ and not to cause inconvenience with my presence, because that is how we are raised). That desire for pleasing others at my own expense, has been exorcised out of me.

Few years ago I was visiting one of my best friends in Seoul. On my way back to Dhaka, at the airport, after standing dutifully in a queue for over an hour, when I proceeded to approach the check in counter, I see that all the counters read “group”, so I proceeded to ask the airlines guy which counter is serving single passengers. He told me: “Madam, as it is night and there are many passengers on this flight, kindly you have to wait until the groups have checked in.” I start fuming as I had been waiting already for ages and allowed for plenty of ‘groups’ to pass by (definition of ‘groups’ also extended to couples without children!). I then went: “WHAT ???? I am sorry but I can no longer wait. I’ve done my part and stood in this queue for this long. Kindly see which counter can serve me now. It’s ridiculous that ALL counters are serving only groups! How long am I supposed to wait?” The guy repeats his earlier statement, this time looking vaguely scared of me and twitching his eyebrows. Then I had to throw in my “middle-aged confident” card: “It’s not my fault that I am not part of a “group”; I think it’s rather unfair for your airlines to punish single passengers this way and making them wait the longest. I paid same price for my ticket at your carrier as each person in these groups! And I deserve equal service.” Literally 5 seconds later, a counter magically opens up for single passengers, the scared airlines staff ushered me to it and I was the first “group-less” passenger to be served, opening up the queue for ‘single’ passengers such as myself. I used to be a bit “nice” once upon a time. Those days sucked!

At my current age of 40, I can say confidently that I am supremely happy to not be ‘young’ anymore, and even for the perception of ‘youth’ to have been taken away from me. Youth and I parted amicably and gladly a while back. Did it sting a tiny bit when street vendors and shopkeepers shifted from addressing me as ‘Sister /Apa” to “Aunty / Khalamma’ even before I turned 25? Not really, as it was more amusing than sad really. A lot of it probably had to do with my mildly aggressive resting face (something I inherited from my father) or my expression of: “why am I here, what am I doing here!” a lot of the time. I have been “Aunty” for a while now, even for dudes older than me.

A long time ago, the immigration officer at Dhaka airport asked me (when I was leaving Dhaka for UK where I studied for a year to pursue my MA degree): “You are STILL a student?”. I was just 25! My desi brother was not happy for me to be single and gallivanting around the world for studies (or any other purpose) and travelling solo. I had also resisted the temptation to ask him: “How far did you study?” I didn’t. I just wanted to not miss my flight expense of which had made a sizable dent in my savings account. If he had asked me this now, I would ask to speak to his boss. 100 %.

Personally, to me, the thought of being a vampire, or being frozen on a block of ice and then being unfrozen 100 years later, or having my brain live on (forever), or even to have a mini version of me walking around on this planet (that we kinda destroyed) after I leave, are not appealing. When time’s up, I just really want to be gone, not linger on.

I am happy to be the Middle-Aged lady who other Aunties or Grand-Aunties point to and think to themselves “oh thank god my daughter will not wait to marry till she gets to be that old” (same way I was made to look at such Aunties when I was a kid myself). I genuinely hope their daughters or grand daughters get married to whoever they want and whenever they want, and if they even want to. Marriage had been marketed to women since we are born as some achievement, motherhood as some pre-requisite for being respected / accepted / acknowledged fully as a woman, and managing a home (and everyone in it, without pay, for as long as each person lives) as some unavoidable duty that all women signed up for at birth. And we were told that this is the norm. It is how it is. Who are you to be or to want something else, to do something else?

It takes many of us to be Middle-Aged to find out that: norms are made by us, it can also be changed by us. You do you, and just leave others alone. Live your life and your truth, with botox fillers or not. At least it would have been your choice, good or bad, wrong or right. Given that it is your life, should there be any other way? Should there have been any other way?

“The reality is not exactly what the song started out to be, but it’s not a bad song.” This is a quote from the book “The Bridges of Madison Country”.

I hope we all feel that wherever we are and at whatever stage of life we are in, or eventually get to.