I decided that it was about time to have another identity
crisis. I was about to turn thirty on Friday and on Wednesday, I was cast in a
play as a fifteen year old high school student. That would have been fine if
all the other people cast were older too. They were not. This is a college
student production and all the other people cast were eighteen to twenty years
old. I am the only grad student and an old one at that. I don’t look like it
though which is why I was cast as the youngest character in the play. The play
has eight high school students and I am the younger sister of the main
character, making me the youngest. I didn’t think being cast as someone half my
age would be an unpleasant experience, but it was. One of the resolutions I
made when I was coming up on my thirtieth birthday was to stop lying about my
age, which I have been successfully doing for years. I usually admit to twenty
four or twenty five. But now I am letting everyone know I was turning thirty.
Then a few days later I receive confirmation that I still resemble a high
schooler. I would have been fine with college age but high school age is too
much. I almost feel insulted by my face. I want to tell it to look older.
But this is where the crisis comes
in. I think I do look older. I have fine lines around my eyes. My forehead is
more bumpy and one wrinkle sometimes stays put. After staring at the mirror and
seeing evidence of my decay, I want to yell at the undergraduates of the world
and ask them why they cannot see I definitely look much older than all of them.
That didn’t happen, but I wanted it to. It really makes me question the order
of death and destruction in the world when I now look younger than I used to
look, or the same as I have looked for the last fifteen years. I finally
figured out the best hairstyle for me and in the last couple months have got it
as close to perfection as I can. I finally started using face cream after I got
back from Europe a few months ago. I guess the real problem is that I thought I
would be further along in life by the time I was thirty, and that I would look
it too. Thinking back to my first identity crisis when I was nine, this one is
barely a blip, but that nine year-old expected her thirty-year-old counterpart
to at least have been on more dates and be married by this point. I had a real
job for a while before going back to school, so I don’t feel like a failure on
that front.
This crisis is nothing like a
couple others I’ve had. I started lying about my age to avoid crisis.
Acceptance and being okay with my age was something of a healthy move. But was
it? Should I have kept lying to myself? I don’t think I mind being thirty.
Being single and thirty is more troubling. Just ask my parents. Being single,
thirty, and being unable to date anyone your age because you look like a kid is
torture. Have you ever had a crush on a guy and then discovered he is ten years
younger than you? It is a bit disturbing. And if it is disturbing for me, I can
imagine it’s worse for the guy.
Maybe I can just put this down to
being in too many rehearsals for Oedipus at Colonus or reading too much Freud
for my psychoanalytic literature class this semester. Or maybe I’m cursed to be
single and look far too young the rest of my life. It may sound good but it isn’t.
