According to my coat, I should be bald.
Joey, my son, had a debate event to attend in Washington DC and needed a suit coat and his overcoat dry cleaned. I decided to have my my pea coat cleaned. Three years had passed since I bought it. My coat was definitely due for the cleaners.
I had it back for 2 days before it was completely covered in my hair.
This is why I can't have nice things.
I do not understand how I still have hair.
Yesterday, I felt that familiar tickle on my arm that meant another hair had detached from my head. I looked down and pulled it off my arm.
One long, twinkly gray hair.
I stared at it for a while and contemplated this definitive proof that I am getting old.
Which is a nice way of saying I had a momentary freak out. It was internal. No one else witnessed my mini melt down.
One of the benefits of having a traumatic childhood is that I am able to disassociate when I get stressed out. Sure, anything on the dissociative spectrum isn't a good thing, but I find that having a tendency toward depersonalization can come in handy. I mean, it's not like I can just get rid of it, so I might as well appreciate it. There are times when detaching is the most comfortable thing that can happen.
The thing is, I have as little control over when I feel detached as I have over my internal jukebox. So that means that I might blurt out Weird Science by Oingo Boingo while not feeling excited over some really cool stuff that is going on in my life right now.
The lack of emotion is what sucks about feeling detached. Stress is stress. It makes no difference if it is good stress or bad stress, any stress can kick off a mild round of depersonalization.
I think I have been detached from feeling a lot of feelings I need to have regarding the aging process.
I think that seeing that single gray hair pierced my haze.
There is no denying that I'm getting older. Not just getting older, but changing in a more material way than I have in decades.
Leaving my teens and entering my twenties wasn't difficult physically, I went from playing softball and bowling and volleyball to dancing two or three nights a week in the clubs. I could go for hours and still get up for work in the morning.
I started working out like a fiend in my early thirties, so I felt great. I'm sure I needed a little more time to recover than I did in my teens and twenties, but not enough to care.
By my forties? Well, I broke down a little. There were surgeries, some aches and pains, but I could still work out like a fiend...I just didn't as often as I did in my thirties. I could still convince myself that I was the same, that the changes were so minor that they almost didn't count.
Now, well..now has been different. In my head, I feel the same as I have for decades. But my body doesn't feel the same. My face doesn't look the same. I can still work out, but I'm not quite as much of a fiend as I used to be.
A single gray hair made me really consider what I have in front of me. A single gray hair made me admit to myself that I have changes to make that are no longer a good idea, but necessary.
My healthy diet has to happen more often than two or three days a week.
Working up to fiend status is also necessary.
I want to roll on the floor with my grandkids. Even the ones who aren't here yet. I don't want to miss out of experiencing life because the trek is too difficult. I'm not ready for that, even if I am getting older.
I'm not done yet, I know this.
But I am changing. I am aging. A single gray hair made me contemplate these changes.
How do I feel about this?
I am standing in the Warrior pose. I have the middle finger of my right hand extended and I'm summoning with my left hand.
Bring it.