light years

In February, a few weeks before my 36th birthday, I read LIGHT YEARS, James Salter’s lyrical but spiritually bleak tale of middle age (which in his book — or maybe just in the 70s? — seems to begin in your early 30s).

The characters in it are all haunted by the idea that their lives were a “single summer” that is lost almost instantly.

‘Do we really only have one season? One summer,’ she said, ‘and it’s over?’

The book also contains this extraordinary passage about being in your forties that, even as I raised an eyebrow at it — more about my skepticism later — is pretty thunderous.

‘You know, you’re going to be forty-four in a couple of weeks,’ she said.

‘Yes.’

‘I’m sorry to miss your birthday.’

‘Forty-four,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid I’m beginning to look it.’

‘The easy part is over.’

‘It was easy?’

‘We’re entering the underground river,’ she said. ‘Do you know what I mean?’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘It’s ahead of us. All I can tell you is, not even courage will help.’

‘Are you reading Alma Mahler again?’

‘No.’ Her voice was even and knowing.

The underground river. The ceiling lowers, grows wet, the water rushes into the darkness. The air becomes damp and icy, the passage narrows. Light is lost here, sound; the current begins to flow beneath great, impassable slabs.

‘What makes you say that courage won’t help?’

‘Courage, wisdom, none of it.’

‘Nedra…’

‘Yes.’

‘Is everything all right?’

‘Of course.’

‘No, really. Nedra, you know, I always … I’m here.’

‘Viri, I’m fine.’

‘Are you happy?’ he asked.

She laughed. Happiness. She meant to be free.

All of the characters are tortured by a disquiet about their lives, a longing to blow up their relationships or homes or careers to see if that scratches the itch.

It is a beautifully written book, especially the structural stuff Salter does with how time passes narratively, but I couldn’t help but not BELIEVE the characters. I didn’t believe their disquiet was about AGING. I question the assumption that a profound disquiet, regret, or questioning the purpose of your life is a sign that you’re old. I think that the real reason appears sneakily in this book, through lines like these:

There are really two kinds of life. There is, as Viri says, the one people believe you are living, and there is the other. It is this other which causes the trouble, this other we long to see.

In my experience so far, getting older feels like the chance to become more and more human. At its clearest moments, it feels like I am unifying parts of myself, lining them up, making sure they’re true — that I am not living two lives, or many, but one.

A fear of “aging” seems more like a fear of ourselves — of being more human — of being more vulnerable — of forsaking our principles and being exposed as false, cowardly, empty, or lonely.

And you know what — maybe some of us are!

But to me, that’s good news. Aging we can’t change — but those things, we can.

It’s been on my mind. Maybe because of my birthday. Maybe the heavy trends this past year or so of white women continually infantilizing ourselves, grasping at childhood through fashion or media. Maybe I’ve reached a saturation point with the “anti aging” skincare marketed so ferociously to women my age. Or the vapid anti-intellectualism of “____ for girls” memes, even as a joke. Maybe I have finally been pushed to the breaking point by people my age who only read YA, lol!

I don’t know about you, but I worked pretty hard not to be a child anymore.

To be the adult woman i wish my younger self had.

To be able to speak confidently in a room — to tell a guy to get the hell out of here if he’s bothering a girl too scared to speak up — to mentor young girls — to be expansive enough to listen to them without imposing my own experience, to learn from them — to be unintimidated by bullshit — to be capable of pulling together the spreadsheet, leading the community meeting — to drive stick shift — to be intellectually vigorous — to fight with my friends because we love each other — to take responsibility for my ongoing political education — to admit when I’m wrong.

In the wide, whirling expanse where the personal is political and the political is personal, I have worked to no longer be a daughter, but to be my own woman.

In a cool twist of timing this year, I got to spend my birthday in Boston (with lots of friends ❤️ ), thanks to a work thing. On the plane ride there, I watched The Marsh King’s Daughter, a movie that was sort of bad but nonetheless made me cry. In it, Daisy Ridley plays a woman who grew up in the woods, adoring her survivalist father, learning how to live off the land and earning stick-and-poke tattoos from him each time she kills an animal, fails to shoot one, etc. All that is shattered when she learns he was actually keeping her and her mother captive, that he’d kidnapped her mother years ago. Fast forward many years later, when Daisy is an adult. She hasn’t seen her father in years but his voice is still in her head, and his tattoos are still on her skin: the nickname he gave her (Little Shadow), a deer, a series of symbols on her wrist. Her stepfather, who is Ojibwe, points out the wrist tattoo and says, “You know, your dad took a lot of things from my people and twisted them. [That] means owned, not family. Don’t confuse the two.” Cue me bursting into tears on the plane.

Don’t confuse the two. A lot of people do.

For me personally, being “a daughter” of my father meant the status of a permanent child. It demanded I stay submissive, feminine — that I didn’t challenge the rules, show my full intellect, or even cut my hair too short. It meant an identity bound to a father (a real, full person) while I remained a shadow.

I am, of course, factually, still a daughter. But my spiritual journey into adulthood has been a process of shedding that as a defining characteristic. Of understanding how patriarchy benefits from my being childlike. Children, after all, can’t make their own decisions.

Building my own family — choosing a partner, choosing friend-family, choosing political family, even choosing new ways of loving and understanding my blood family — meant redefining those ties.

It allows me to step outside a second-wave feminism that would have me mysticizing “womanhood” — an essentialist project that ultimately loops back to super backwards gender prisons — and instead think about the process of becoming human under misogyny.

Under misogyny, women are reduced to their servitude and reproductive value. If you are less of a person, and more of a womb or a sex object, your value drops as you age. In that context, you are literally less human, the more you age. (Thank you, tradwives! It starts with how fun it is to make sourdough bread when you’re 20, and it ends with you giving up your human rights and entering into financial servitude!)

But outside misogyny — in the pursuit of a liberatory politics — all of us could be human, and human could mean everyone. To age could mean to bring the pieces of your life together. To live with less and less shame. To be more yourself, and to show more of yourself to the people you love.

These are my dreams! I’m another year older. Softer (in several ways). Tougher. I love a bit more honestly. I hope I get the chance to do it all, even more. To the underground river I go!