20d • Write of Passage
Middle-Aged Manifesto
I followed the map they gave me. Worked hard. Smiled when it hurt. Said thank you when I should’ve said “no.” Tried to be good. Tried to be liked. Tried to be small enough to fit into a life that was never actually made for me.
I climbed the ladder and found the top felt exactly like the bottom, just with fewer people asking if I was okay.
They said this part, this middle, was supposed to be golden. Mostly, it feels like grief in a nice blouse. Like I’m starring in a show that got renewed for too many seasons. Like I built a life I forgot to live inside.
And the worst part? It almost worked.
I almost convinced myself this was fine. That low-grade disappointment is just part of being an adult. That aching is normal. That disconnection is the cost of growing up.
Then one morning, I pulled on the identity they gave me and realized: “I am way too big for this little coat.”
It was never tailored for me. I just kept contorting, shrinking, smoothing the seams, trying to be agreeable enough, quiet enough, competent enough to make a costume feel like skin.
Now I’m tugging at the sleeves. Unbuttoning the guilt. Standing in the mirror asking: “Whose damn hat am I wearing, and why?”
Because it sure as hell isn’t mine.
It’s some inherited costume piece from a life I never agreed to. The respectable professional hat. The keep-smiling-through-it hat. The mom-wife-worker-boss-friend-beautiful-on-the-outside-and-empty-on-the-inside hat.
And it’s itchy as hell.
Then there’s the other hat. The one I don’t talk about in polite company. The one lined with silence and stitched in fear. The I’m fine hat. The no one can know what happened to me hat. The cover the bruises and smile hat. The keep the secret or you won’t be safe hat.
That hat is heavy. Soaked through with old panic and newer shame. It’s the hat I wore when I needed to survive.
I’m tired of surviving in disguise.
I want to stand here, bareheaded and unhidden, and say this clearly: I don’t owe anyone my silence. I don’t owe anyone my shame. I don’t need to keep wearing pain just because it fits.
I used to think survival was the goal. Just make it through. Just keep it together. Just stay small enough that no one notices the shaking.
But surviving starts to feel like dying when it’s the only thing you’re allowed to do.
At some point, you want more than to disappear quietly. You want to take up space. You want to be loud again. You want to dance in the middle of the story you were once too scared to even claim.
That isn’t because the world got easier. It’s because you stopped apologizing for existing in it.
I used to think healing meant fixing what was broken. Now I know healing means reclaiming what they told me I couldn’t be.
Messy. Honest. Vast. Sensual. Sharp. Spiritual without a brochure. Unraveling and rising in the same damn breath.
I don’t want a quiet life. I want a real one. One where I can grieve and laugh with my mouth wide open. One where my body is not currency or apology. One where my anger is not labeled hysteria. One where I don’t owe the world softness just to be allowed to exist.
If that makes me too much, good.
Let them choke on it. Let them recalibrate their idea of woman to include the holy mess I am. Let them rebuild their vocabulary to include my name.
I’m not shrinking anymore. I’m expanding. Loudly. Deliberately. Without a goddamn hat.
I don’t want to bounce back. I’m not a rubber band. I am a woman who burned down her blueprint and started sketching a new life in the ash.
This version of me doesn’t fit your before-and-after photos. She isn’t a transformation. She’s an unfolding.
I don’t want a fresh start. I want a true one. Something that honors the girl I was, the pain I carried, the softness I buried, and the rage I finally stopped editing for public consumption.
This version of me speaks more slowly. Breathes deeper. Listens for her own voice before anyone else’s.
She doesn’t chase worth. She builds rituals instead of routines. She measures success by the boundaries kept and the joy felt. She laughs louder now, like someone who finally believes the sound belongs to her.
She wears her scars like GPS coordinates. She doesn’t flinch when people leave. She leaves, too, on purpose.
She stopped asking, “Am I too much?”
Now she asks, “Is this room too small?”
If the answer is yes, she builds a bigger room. With more light. With softer chairs. With space for grief and glitter and naps and weirdness and women who whisper fuck it and mean it like a prayer.
This is my middle age—a coronation. I came home to crown myself.
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Middle-Aged Manifesto
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