Why feel sad because physical appearance changes when age gracefully!
I don’t think the sadness is only about becoming less physically attractive, part of it is about becoming less visible.
When I was a child, my mother and I once went to visit our cousin. I barely knew her. They lived in the other city in a two-story house. I still remember the smell inside, Medicine and Dettol, Almost like a hospital.
My mother’s cousin had two sons around my age and a husband. While the adults were setting the lunch, the three of us ran around the house playing hide-and-seek.
At one point, I opened the door to a room at the far end of the hallway. The smell of medicine was much stronger there. And then I saw a woman lying in bed, like a skeleton covered with a bed sheet.
The curtains were closed, so the room was dark. In that half-light, her thin arms looked almost frightening to me.
I got scared, closed the door, and ran back.
Later, while we were having tea, I asked my mother’s cousin about the woman.
“Don’t mind her. You go and play,” she said. “Grandma can’t get out of bed anyway.”
I sat there eating a piece of cake and looking at the framed photographs hanging on the wall behind her.
One of them stayed with me. A black-and-white photograph of a tall young vivacious woman with a long braid almost reaching her waist and small dimples in her cheeks.
She was so beautiful, I thought at the time.
It was the same woman who was lying in that dark room.
I remember thinking about that for a long time afterward. How can a person still be alive and somehow become almost invisible?
That is part of what scares me about getting older too-being noticed less.
And one day having people stop seeing the person I still feel like inside.
We don’t truly confront aging by erasing the lines on our faces—we conquer it by standing tall when the world tries to shove us into a dark room at the end of the hall.
Claim your space boldly. Laugh loudly, wear whatever you love, and speak your mind without asking for permission.
Victory isn’t about preserving the reflection of a twenty-five-year-old. Whether your cheeks carry dimples or wrinkles, the real triumph is looking the world straight in the eye and declaring:
“I am still here, and I am fully, fiercely alive!”
