At fifty-eight, I have more years behind me than ahead. That fear grips me sometimes, maybe more times than I care to admit. Midlife crisis aside, I find myself trying to hold on to something I can’t quite put my fingers on. I don’t look my age at all—a genetic blessing from the Italian heritage I am fortunate to have—but I look in the mirror and see the years of my life written on my face in wrinkle font. I don’t see them on my face, not that I have none. I see the wrinkles in my soul. Everyone has them.
I don’t believe I will ever get rid of them. I can stave off the effects of those wrinkles in my soul, but I can’t stave off the reality of every strain, suffering, and life experience that has worn them into me. My soul has gray hairs I color over, too.
Why?
Society has an unhealthy obsession with youth. It focuses almost exclusively on the young and beautiful. Older actresses disappear from leading roles, replaced by matronly characters; musical fame goes to the young and misguided or undisciplined, and influence is handed to inexperienced, often ridiculous young people with no concept of the consequences of their actions. Maybe they don’t even care.
I am not immune to this phenomenon. I want to stay younger-looking. I want to be younger again, not as I once was, but with my current wisdom. But that can’t happen, so I distract myself from the realities of aging by focusing on the visible signs. I try to minimize the signs of my years on my face in this grinding life.
Women in general obsess over it. That’s why we have a cosmetics industry worth billions of dollars, with shady companies snake-charming us into buying their miracle cure for aging. I am guilty of buying into that.
How?
I spend an inordinate amount of money on my skincare routine. I am fortunate to be married to a man who denies me nothing—well, almost nothing. So I buy my creams and elixirs, lotions, and skin-tightening serums. Do they work? Who knows. I look in the mirror every day and see the same face. I can’t actually remember what I saw in the mirror five years ago, mirror, mirror on the wall, but I see the exact same face I think I had when I was 20. The mirror lies.
How do I know it lies? I catch the lies when I see a photograph, and I cringe at how old I look. I hold that image next to me when I go back to look into the liar, and then I see it. Reality. I am not young anymore.
It Knows What Scares You
For me, the fear is not knowing when I begin the final descent. I can’t say whether it will be sudden and painless or involve great suffering in a long, arduous fight to hold on. So, to avoid slipping into the abyss of depressive thoughts, I do things to make myself look better on the outside.
I won’t lie and say it’s for me. It isn’t. If it were for me alone, I might be okay with a few more wrinkles and gray hair. I do it for that little person in my head who wants to hold on to sanity and happiness, rather than the world that wants to keep me in my place as a 58-year-old woman in a world for the young.
I do it to look better for my husband. Don’t get me wrong. He doesn’t care about wrinkles or whether I look my age. He still thinks I look 45. I don’t have the heart to tell him he’s lost his mind. I know he loves me and would never leave me for a younger woman. He loves the quicksand I walk on.
Truths
Maybe I try to hold onto my youthful appearance because I want to look and feel that way. Maybe I do it to feel more attractive to the outside world or to men who see me in passing. I won’t lie: when someone looks at me at my age, it feels fantastic. It really does. All those little endorphin boosts are amazing. But realistically, they don’t count in the grand scheme of things.
If I want to be completely open with you all, I do so because I am vain. We all are, I think. I won’t ever go to the extremes of surgical alterations to my face, but I don’t mind using whatever topical or herbal concoctions I can to at least slow the process in my physical appearance. My internal one doesn’t feel 58, but I am, and some days I do feel every moment of those 58 years. Nothing will change that.
To the Death!
I’ll fight my battle against the weathering of my skin as long as I care. And I think that is the distinction. I still care. I care about my appearance. I care to keep my mind off my aging body and mind. I just don’t want to be dropped into the bottomless pit of inevitability. So I battle on.
I won’t win. But I won’t let it take me down the primrose path until I give it permission. So the cosmetic industry can have my dollars if it means I feel better about punting the ball further downfield. At least I have moist skin, and I feel like I am doing a good job fighting my foe. I’ll take that win and leave the rest to God and nature.
(Published by Crow’s Feet on Medium, 2026)
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Ah, this spoke to me! I'm 52, and I have a 6-step skin care routine I'm pretty regular with. Does it help? I don't know, either, but it certainly doesn't hurt (I try to keep it economically feasible). I also am very grey, but that is not a problem for me because now my hair can be dyed any number of wonderful colours I'd have to bleach my hair to put in before when I was a brunette. Currently rocking a dark purple and loving it!