Today I realised I’m now on the downhill approach to my forty-seventh birthday and all too soon I'll be staring down the barrel of being fifty. Now, don’t get me wrong; I have no problem with aging. Perhaps it’s the fact my body is already falling apart on me, that I quite like the idea of turning my wheelchair into a dog powered wheelie machine, that I have the maturity of an eight year old on a sugar rush (not all the time obviously as I have to drive and handle sharp objects); but age really is just a number in my world – I don’t worry about turning fifty because I know I won’t feel any different.
I didn’t feel different when I turned forty; I didn’t when I turned thirty or twenty, so I figure hitting fifty will be the same just with more wrinkles and a decrepit body. Of course if anyone reading this, and oh how I hope you are, is fifty and can tell me different then please do. I am here to learn and if you want to say at fifty my life is going to hell in a handcart (well, more than it is already) then I will take that under advisement and plan accordingly.
See, the thing is I’ve decided I am not going to grow old gracefully; not that I’m going to turn into a plastic – one of those women who’ve had so much plastic surgery that they can only ever approach a radiator or fireplace with strict caution in case they melt all over the carpet (yes, I'm looking at you Joan Rivers). I’m fairly sure that the Wicked Witch from ‘The Wizard of Oz’ had just had a lot of (bad) plastic surgery and the water that caused her to melt was just hot; I say bad plastic surgery because, let’s face it, the woman was green.
No, what I mean is that I am, as the saying goes, going to skid up to my grave (or furnace) with my body in tatters, my hair all over the place with a bar of chocolate in one hand and a cream cake in the other, sitting in my V8 wheelchair, yelling “Oh yeah; now that was a wild ride!!”
I don’t have a ‘bucket list’ because they’re meaningless; how the hell do I know what I want to do before I die? I don’t know when I’m going to die; I could get my family to take out a loan and do all the things I might want to do and then live for fifty years with us paying off a huge loan - or, having got the piece of paper out to write said list, trip over the cat and break my neck. Trust me, it could happen; I trip over the cat a lot.
So (my) logic tells me not to bother, just love the life I have and accept that living it large is the best thing. Not getting drunk (I can’t because of all my medication), taking drugs (I don’t, I have more than enough from the hospital thanks) or stealing cars (I can't as unless they're an automatic my arms aren't strong enough to stir the gears nowadays); I just mean living every minute with fun – laughing at all the madness we all have to deal with daily in particular and sticking two fingers up at life in general.
Now I’m not a ‘happy, clappy’ fool; I don’t laugh at everything obviously – like, say, when at a funeral, because that would be wrong; though I did snigger once at a relative’s funeral, but only because his wife turned up in a red dress.....I’ll leave the reason why to you to figure out. But I do laugh at a lot of other things because that’s what keeps me sane. Besides I think celebrating a birthday is a necessity really – it shows we’ve survived another year in a world run by morons; especially these days.
So, bring it on Mr Fifty, I’m ready for you – just bring cake, and make it chocolate.
This is Simi, thanks for reading......................
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