Midlife Crisis

So I have been feeling decrepit lately, being (gulp) 45 years old and there's no longer any wiggle room to pretend to be anything but (gulp) middle aged. I'm in that weird dimension in which my mind thinks I'm 25 and my body thinks I'm 60. The fact that I often don't know what day of the week it is, but have a savant-like memory for all songs from the 80s, is befuddling and adds to my assurance that I am not young anymore.

In order to combat the inevitable slide down the backside of the hill, I bought some shiny badass roller skates. I've decided to attempt to join the Roller Derby under the name Zelda Hitzgerald because she was nuts as well as literary - something I feel I am as well deep in my soul. To date, I've attended two training camps. I've fallen on my ample rear, learned how to stop, learned how to fall down, and today was ALMOST the Queen of the Rink, which is an awesome game in which babes on skates try to slam each other down and/or out of the rink. I came in second to a young and fantastic skater with ACTUAL DERBY EXPERIENCE. My heart pumped. My hips slammed into hers. But I fell first. Exhilarated, I got back up and we high-fived with our wrist guards, making a satisfying clack. I will win next time, mark my words.

As I write this, I feel my inner thigh and hamstring muscles seizing up and I'm sure it'll be hard to walk tomorrow, but I also felt young for a couple of hours as I skated. I wasn't the fastest or best person there. I wasn't the cutest or thinnest or bravest. It took me back to weekends spent as a teen at United Skates of America, when I WAS some of the above (namely, fast, skinny, and brave). I had outstanding blue tennis shoe skates with yellow stripes, short shorts with rainbows on them, and a comb in the back pocket. Out on the wooden floor I felt free. I could skate forwards and backwards and squatted down with my leg straight out front. I could do the hokey pokey and moonlight skate with sketchy boys from other schools. And I could do all of this without a sore lower back, a weird tingling in my knees, and fingernail sensitivity. I do get to use a bubblegum flavored mouth guard now, though.

The thought of aging is awful and not awful at the same time. I think we all try to capture some of the greatness of youth, but there are so many things I would never want to relive (like acne, no one asking me to the prom, and the general awkwardness of being a weird kid in a normal world). One blessing of getting older is realizing that time is not infinite. I know I don't have forever spreading out before me like I thought I did when I was 15. It's important to try everything under the sun before I can't. My sad, deteriorating body isn't what it used to be, but it's still functional (well, mostly), and I need to enjoy it while I still can.

I may never be invited to join the derby officially. I may never get to experience the thrill of body slamming some young thing in a bout. Zelda Hitzgerald may never be more than a fun little fantasy I live out every few weeks. But when I actually am old and my body actually can't do the things I want it to anymore, I can look back and laugh at old Zelda and be glad she existed.