Katie's Secret

Midlife hit me like a torpedo. It knocked me off my feet, shook, rattled, rocked and rolled me, and brought to the surface an unknown fear I’d been running from my whole life. Then, like a stunned dog who’d just been unexpectedly and abruptly thrown into the water, I was left feeling blindsided and bowled over.

What just happened? And what was the great fear? The fear of death? That’s not very original. The fear of losing my youth? Just as unoriginal. The knowing that no matter how evolved or enlightened I become, it won't matter because I will never again be seen as a pretty girl? And it doesn’t seem to make any difference that I understand how absurd it is, because when I’m lunching with girlfriends, all of whom are smart and attractive and witty and wise, the conversation inevitably turns to the ass of the 19-year-old waitress who’s working our table.

“Wow, look at her ass,” I say.

“It’s not a great ass,” a friend replies.

“Yeah,” says another friend, “It’s kind of a flat ass.”

“Well,” I add, “if I had that ass, I’d be a perfectly happy and complete person.”

We laugh because of course we know better. But do we? Do we really know better? And after all the ass-talk, what do you think the chances are of our conversation returning to world events, literature and art? None. We're gone. We've crossed into the darkness that lurks in so many middle-aged women regardless of their upbringing, education or level of self-worth.

Before I hit 40, I prided myself on being a "Natural Woman;" a woman of substance, certainly a woman who was above the"False-Image-of-Beauty-Thing." But every month when I receive a Victoria’s Secret catalog in the mail, a sick feeling rises then rests right in the middle of my throat. It's as if when midlife struck, everything my history had prepared me for (Greatness being one of them), went out the window, disappeared, just like the cellulite (I bet) that clings to the waitress's ass under those tight black jeans. Like the blemish on the Victoria's Secret model's chin, or the flab I'm sure lives under the arms of Charlize Theron, midlife came calling and as quickly as the stroke of an airbrush, who I am and what I'm made of all disappeared.