July 21, 2000

  i am starting to feel the old and familiar malaise i get when approaching yet another birthday. i really do have to figure out a better way of handling this age thing.

     Most of the time i push it firmly to the back of my mind.  But there are days when my fingers are aching and i'm looking more tired than usual, and i can't ignore the fact that time is passing by.  

     Then i feel like the last bloom on the rose bush, tenaciously hanging on.  

     And this sounds awful, but i'm afraid i'll look like my mother.  Intellectually i do understand that part of the reason she didn't age "well" was due to her drinking excessively, and smoking even more excessively.  In fact, sometimes three larges packs of cigarettes per day was consumed.  i don't know how she could stand it.   Master and i were discussing  perfumes, and how our society seems determined to mask natural scents, rather than accept them, and i told Him how my mother used to use large amounts of perfume because of her smoking.  She'd often bathe twice a day, then add talcum powder and deodorant and several perfumes.  And chew breath mints.  

     Anyway, i digress.  No matter how nice she smelled, the effects of the smoking showed strongly on her face.  i think her dissatisfaction with life marked her as well.  She was prematurely very deeply lined, and by the age of 50, looked years older.  After my father died, she decided she would get a facelift.  i think she felt this would be a cure-all for every thing that she felt was wrong about her life.  Often i'd hear her lament "Who's going to look at me like this?"  Perhaps she thought the surgery would give her back some of her youth.   

     What she never seemed to understand, and what i'm trying to teach myself to understand, is that people who love you look past one's shell and see the real person inside.  And that is what's important.  

     Yet, as the signs become more evident, i also have a sense of time running out.  People laugh at me and say i'm "too young" yet, to be worrying about this, but it's there floating around in my brain.  Like i'm missing something i'm supposed to be doing, yet i can't seem to discover what it is.

     And i guess another part of the angst is that now that i've finally come to terms with who i am, and doing what it is i like with regard to the lifestyle, i want it to go on forever.  Yet i can't imagine myself hanging from the cross when i'm a little old lady.  

     Why the heck didn't i listen to myself long ago, when i first uttered the words "please spank me ..."  

     Too many lost years!