Disappearing Act
Dear Diary,
I’ve been disappearing. It’s been happening for almost a decade. When I was younger and firmer and blonder and earned Sephora rewards on the regular, I got a decent amount of attention. In bars. At concerts. In the grocery store. At restaurants.
Of course, most of that attention was unwanted male attention, but it was attention, nonetheless. I traveled a bit for work, and inevitably, another lonely traveler at a bar would try and buy me a drink when all I really wanted to do was read my book with a nice glass of Cabernet Sauvignon.
But as I’ve gotten rounder in the belly, thicker in the hips, and shorter (and grayer!) in the hairstyle, that attention has waned. It’s 100% okay with me to fly under the radar of the male gaze, but it’s an interesting observation.
The Incredible, Disappearing, Middle-Aged Woman.
I’m venturing to guess that many women my age have felt it. Just as we begin to become comfortable and settled in our own bodies, we start fading from sight. It’s a sad statement about our society, I think, the way we place so much value on youth and beauty. An age-old story.
Much more unsettling to me, however, is what I recently experienced at the Tampa RV show. (I know, right? I’m talking about societal expectations of beauty, and then I segue awkwardly to RVs. But hear me out. There’s a big observation here.)
My back has been steadily declining. An old sacroiliac joint injury combined with spinal stenosis, bulging discs, newly-diagnosed arthritis, and too much pickleball sometimes renders me all but incapacitated. I can no longer walk or hike any kind of distance without experiencing searing pain in my hip and numbness in my leg. I now understand a little bit of what my mom went through when she said she had “good days” and “bad days” in her MS-ridden body.
Sweet Julie does her best to ensure I am not pushing myself too far. She wrangles the dogs and lifts the heavy things and lets me sit in the car and listen to Brandi Carlile while she grocery shops. At the Tampa RV show, she insisted I rent a scooter so I wouldn’t have to trek across the entirety of the Florida State Fairgrounds.
We laughed at my bad driving, at my propensity to go too slowly or have too many near misses with small children. But as embarrassed as I was to drive a scooter, it was, in fact, a lifesaver.
And you know what else it was? A cloak of invisibility.
In those four hours, I got a tiny glimpse into the life of someone with a visible, physical disability. And it wasn’t pretty. In general, the public was oblivious to my existence. No one bothered to move out of the way, to acknowledge my need for a wider berth, to even make eye contact.
A middle-aged woman slowly becomes invisible. A middle-aged woman in an electronic scooter is a pariah.
And the hardest part of that realization was that before I needed a scooter, I was the worst offender and avoider. I admit that I’ve often seen people in scooters as irritating or just plain lazy. I’m certain that when some people saw me—a white-haired, overweight, 50-something—they thought the same thing. They didn’t know I competed in eight games of pickleball the day before. They didn’t know I trained for and ran a marathon a decade earlier. They didn’t know I played three competitive sports in my youth—sports that undoubtedly contributed to the current condition of my spine. To them, I was just a fat, lazy, old lady in a scooter. (And I didn’t even use the annoying back-up beeper!)
What’s that they say about walking a mile in someone else’s shoes? Well, I rode a mile in someone else’s electronic scooter, and I didn’t like what I learned.
But it changed me, too. It made me a little more compassionate, a little less judgmental. It made me aware of how I perceive others and how I jump to conclusions. (Okay, I don’t really jump anymore per the spine issue, but you know what I mean...)
It made me stop and think.
It made me want to be better.
It made me want us all to be better.
I’m starting here—with the white-haired lady in the mirror. The one who used to turn heads and sink 3-pointers and bike 100-mile weekenders and trek through mountains. (But only on the trails without sharp drop-offs because I’m deathly afraid of heights.)
The one whose heart and soul—much like yours—has always remained the same, regardless of the size of my waistline and the length of my hair. The one who can always do better now that she knows better.
That’s always the best place to begin.
Love Your (Not-So-Gracefully) Aging Friend,
Katrina