Forever The Ingenue

I'm identifying with the wrong archetype I think

When I finally got pregnant at 41, after my husband and I did two grueling years of IVF and countless procedures to whip my uncooperative reproductive system into shape, there was a part of me that still imagined myself as a teenager.

“Such a shame, pregnant at 41 with her whole life ahead of her,” I thought to myself, dramatically, as I dropped a pile of pregnancy tests on the conveyer belt at CVS.

I imagined the hushed whispers of the nosy townspeople. What’s she gonna do? What will happen to her? What about her studies, which she finished in 1997?

“It isn’t even a question,” I announced to no one, defiantly. “I’m going to keep the baby and somehow we’re going to make it work.”

Was I given to this particular flight of fancy—envisioning myself as the heroine of an afterschool special—because I’d been a chunky thoughtful nerd who gorged myself on young adult books and teen magazines growing up?

Maybe.

I can remember watching No Means No, over and over and over. It’s an afterschool special a school break special where a hunky Chad Lowe plays the brother of a girl who gets date raped on a boat.

Some of the cast of “No Means No” and their Emmys. Yes that is Lori Loughlin. She played Chad Lowe’s girlfriend. Dana Barron from Vacation played the lead. And I’m assuming the older guy played the dad or was the director.

There is a scene after the incident where she is walking mournfully on a pier wearing an oversized sweatshirt and denim jacket—the uniform of women who no longer want to suffer the male gaze—while Simply Red’s Holding Back the Years plays and the wind ruffles her perm.

Meanwhile the rapist, a handsome athlete who is friends with Chad Lowe, goes home and eats cereal!

Cereal eater. I could have sworn he played football but this photo suggests he wrestled. Hm.

There was something so glamorous and cool to me, aforementioned chunky nerd who had never enticed a member of the opposite sex let alone inspired an insatiable hunger—about the protagonist. There she is, walking on a pier, but she is changed. She’s dealing with adult problems! But she’s only a teen!

I realize this is highly, highly problematic given what the movie was actually about and not at all what they intended but… this was my takeaway.

“Relationships are painful, breaking up with people is painful,” my mom told me one day when I lamented my chaste preteen lifestyle.

“Yeah but I just want to have a boyfriend and break up with him because then at least someone liked me,” I explained.

I was clearly many years away from being capable of real connection or intimacy. I finally began dating and had my first kiss when I was 17. But I took more pleasure in talking about this guy with my girlfriends than I did in dating him. I was just too immature to be emotionally invested.

When he ultimately dropped me, because, “I knew you were sarcastic, but I didn’t realize you were like 80 percent sarcastic” (my response: “is that like 40 percent too much?”) it didn’t really hurt. I was never in it.

Later, of course, I would realize what my mom said was right and relationships can be painful but at this point it was really about living out my Jessica Wakefield fantasies.

Which brings me back to always identifying as a young person.

I recently got a midface lift which I have written about. I am 51. In my mind I am an example of this growing trend of people having facelifts very young. Except I’m not. Maybe I’m on the younger side of old but when articles decry this trend they are talking about people in their 30s and even 20s.

When I told people around me that I was considering the procedure, I expected them to laugh or talk me out of it. I was too young! To a person, no one did.

I recently realized that I still think of myself as perimenopausal—a term which seems like it’s undergone a refresh and has been adopted by young, attractive people—as opposed to menopausal, a term which sounds dry and creaky. I had a total hysterectomy last year. All of it gone. Cored like an apple. I am definitely menopausal. And yet I just can’t get there, term-wise.

Is this how we all are? Are all of us in our mind still vibrant and bouncy? Young and springy? Effusive and supple? Wearing readers ironically but also sincerely but still, can you believe it?

I remember an early therapist saying that if people miss a developmental stage, they have to go back and experience it. Not that she was prescribing this but just that’s how it works. You will make up for the stage you missed.

Sometimes I wonder if my childhood and young adulthood, specifically the transition from childhood to young adulthood was so wanting that I got stuck there mentally.