Like most people, there was a time when the thought of getting older felt uncomfortable, even frightening. From the cartoons we watch as children to the beauty standards we grow up around, ageing is often framed as something to resist. The old witch steals the youth of the beautiful princess just to feel desirable again.
“Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?”
Wrinkles, grey hair, and the visible signs of time have long been sold to us as something ugly and unwanted. It’s why skincare companies build empires on anti-ageing creams, and why plastic surgeons profit from the fear of looking older. We are taught, subtly and repeatedly, that youth is beauty, and ageing is loss.
I would complain when people mistook my age because of my soft voice and “baby face,” and people around me would laugh and say, “You’ll appreciate it when you’re older, because you’ll still look young.”
Maybe, in some quiet way, I believed that too.
That was until my mum passed away in her early fifties.
I was only 21, a fresh graduate standing at the edge of womanhood, and I had always imagined a life where my mum would be there for all of it. The milestones, the confusion, the becoming. I could never have imagined moving through life without her, especially at such a defining age.
What still makes me sad is that I will never get to watch her grow old.
I will never see her with a full head of grey hair or holding her grandchild in her arms. If I one day get to have my own family, I won’t be able to sit beside her and learn how to raise a child from the woman who raised me.
I won’t get to kiss her wrinkled cheeks, hold her hand, or care for her in the way children eventually care for their parents. I won’t get to be there for her as time softens her face and slows her steps.
And somehow, that loss changed everything.
As I move closer to my thirties, the idea of getting older no longer fills me with fear. Instead, it fills me with excitement. I look forward to the years ahead, to becoming older, wiser, and, hopefully, surrounded by children and grandchildren of my own.
Now, when I look at elderly people, I notice their wrinkles, their careful walk, the way time has settled gently into their bodies. And I see beauty in all of it.
I love the idea of growing old.
Because for me, ageing is a privilege, one that not everyone gets to experience.
What I hope for is not eternal youth, but health. Strength. A sound mind. The chance to keep living long enough for time to leave its marks on me, too.