Sexy Fifty

Time is a cruel thing.

Many had told me, and I laughed at their faces. I wasn’t on the verge of sixty back then. I was barely at my thirties’ threshold and time seemed to be moving too slow for me to care about aging.

But as it happens it crept up on me.

One day, I woke up and I was old.

It’s true.

It didn’t even get the white hair warning because I have been dying them for years anyway. I just happened to have spare time to stare my body in the mirror and the image made me feel sad.

Old and sad, because somehow life had slipped through my fingers. I never took the time to cherish my body and now I was stuck with drooping, unattractive flesh, I could barely look at. My breasts, my buttocks, my belly… but the worst was the underside of my arms.

I could cover anything else effectively but not them. Not during summer. So, I had to keep them close to my body and avoided gesticulating too much. Not to mention that long sleeved shirts were my sole choice.

One can say that even at my age I can still take care of my body.

News Flash.

I have been doing it all my life. Not out of vanity, no. It was just habit with a bit of luck. I don’t have a sweet tooth and greasy food makes me sick, so my nutrition has always been healthy, and I love walking. It reminds me of my dad. He used to love walking too and he always took me with him.

“If you can go somewhere on foot don’t use anything else. Our feet are supposed to carry us”

I held onto that and to this day, I am an excellent walker. That doesn’t fix much. Old age came with a vengeance as they say. It’s as if the whole thing happened during overnight and suddenly, I became somebody else.

I became obsessed with how I looked, something that I never was before, because I had the arrogance of youth. But collagen was leaving my skin and it took said youth with it.

I started observing other women. I focused on the women I estimated were around my age. I don’t know what I did it, but I had this urge to go and ask them how they realized they weren’t young anymore.

Childish?

Perhaps. However, I had grown old without having seen my dreams come true and I had delayed them because there was time. Suddenly, there wasn’t time, and I was in shock that had happened. I wasn’t that shock when I hit menopause at thirty-six, because I never wanted kids anyway. I saw it as a blessing that my period stopped coming because I found all that blood every month both inconvenient and disgusting.

Disgusting was the word that popped first in my mind when I considered the women my age. Harsh, I know, but I couldn’t come to terms with old age.

The phase when I body shamed not only myself but all the older women I saw lasted longer than it should. From one summer to the next, when I had to show myself at the beach again. which I did, wearing a long-sleeved kaftan and knowing that only my feet would touch the water.

Meanwhile, as if universe played a joke on me, all around me at the beach were women over fifty. Women, who had no seconds thoughts about displaying their aging, graceless bodies much to my dismay. They talked and they laughed and they went for a dive and didn’t give a damn if they looked good in their bathing suits.

I wanted to leave, but I didn’t want to be a coward. So, I stayed and I glared at them all because I was sure it was all a pretense.

Then one of them came up to me. She had the audacity to come up to me and smirk down at my kaftan.

“How will you swim in that thing?” she asked.

I gave her chubby, wrinkly body a disdainful look.

“How will you swim in that?” I snapped back.

Yes, I meant her body.

“Well that battered old thing, which wasn’t always that unattractive carried me through fifty three years, carried three children and my husband still finds it as fuckable as I find sexy his belly” she replied sweetly. “So, it has earned the right to go at the beach in a bikini without caring what bitches who are ashamed of their aging body think”

“Excuse me…” I started angrily, but she cut me off.

“They were you sit here, all self-conscious and alone you look more pathetic than any of us do because we don’t have a perfect, youthful body. So you either, throw that thing off and enjoy the sea or go back to your house and be bitter”

She turned and left swaying her jelly hips and I was left gaping. I had never been spoken to in such a manner. After a minute or two, the anger started flaring and I bolted up ready to gather my things.

I looked at them all again. They didn’t care if I was there. They weren’t even looking at me. Not even the woman who came up to me and insulted me.

It hit me then that they were truly not bothered by the way they looked. At least not right at them moment when they were all together. They had come here to bask in the sun and enjoy a good swim and I had come here sulking.

With a fluid motion I threw the kaftan over my head and tossed it on my towel without even bothering folding it neatly as I would normally do.

I walked on the sand keeping my head straight and when my feet touched the water all shame was washed away.

No, I am lying.

It didn’t.

But by the third time I visited that beach I was less judgmental about any body.