Yesterday I got a good look at myself and don't like what I saw. My figure is a train wreck and I don't think twice about it, but yesterday morning was a revelation. I sat at the kitchen table to put on lipstick before going to the funeral, and checked my hair. About that time the bright morning sun came through the window and fell upon my face.
Oh MY God! It's been a long time since I really looked at my face. In the clear light of the sun I saw my saggy turkey neck, and wrinkles I didn't have a year ago. I used to blog (and brag) about how much younger I looked than the girls I went to school with, and how people would say to me "Gee you haven't changed a bit in years!" or people would say "You sure don't look your age!"  I was very smug about it, about my good complexion and lack of wrinkles. But the past 10 months have aged me so much.
This past summer I had weeks of confrontation with a land broker whose surveyors, the greedy bastards, staked out some of MY LAND as part of a 90 acre parcel of forest that was to be clear cut next door. I called the broker, the timber company, the logger and raised cain and said if they cut one twig from my trees there was gonna be trouble. I said I'd call the sheriff, and the snotty logger said he was gonna cut it anyway. I said I'd shoot him if he trespassed on my land ( I was bluffing--sort of--but if he'd pushed me, I would've winged him.) You just can't let people run over you.
It took weeks for the whine of saws and sounds of logging to finish up, with me parked facing them in August heat where they could see me holding the phone out of the car window. It was so stressful my immune system faltered and that chronic fatigue syndrome virus attacked me and for months I felt like utter sh*t. Only six weeks ago did I start feeling like myself again. And the wrinkles came galore.
Anyway, we are like seeds sown in a wheatfield; years pass, we grow to maturity then  the reaper comes and cuts the stalks row by row, and the reaper is getting closer and closer. That's just the way it is, but seeing myself in all clarity was a shocker.
susil