On Aging, Bio-Suits, and Learning to Float Downstream

There’s a moment—and if you’re past forty, you know exactly what I’m talking about—when you catch your reflection and think, who is that? Not in the dramatic, movie-moment kind of way. More like a quiet, unsettling realization that the face staring back at you doesn’t quite match the one you’ve been carrying around in your mind’s eye for decades.

For me, that moment arrived somewhere in my mid-forties. I noticed things. Small things at first. A line that didn’t disappear when I stopped squinting. A certain… softness where there used to be definition. Nothing catastrophic, nothing anyone else would probably notice. But I noticed. And once I noticed, I couldn’t un-notice.

So I did what any reasonable, intelligent woman in the twenty-first century does: I fell headfirst into the rabbit hole of rejuvenation.

The Reign of the Cream Queen

It started innocently enough—a new night cream. Something with retinol, because apparently retinol was the answer to everything. And it worked, sort of. Enough to make me think: if this cream does this, imagine what a better cream could do. And so began my reign as the Cream Queen.

My ex-husband coined that title, and honestly, I wore it with pride. I’ve always lived pretty minimally. I’m not a stuff person, never have been. But cosmetics? Not makeup, mind you, I couldn’t care less about contouring or the latest lip color. Creams, though. Serums. Essences. Ampoules. I had them all. My bathroom counter looked like a small apothecary, lined with promises in elegant glass bottles.

There was always a new one to be tried. A revolutionary formula from Korea. A clinical-grade serum from Switzerland. Something with peptides. Something with stem cells. Something with ingredients I couldn’t pronounce but desperately wanted to believe in. Then another, then another, then another.

I told myself it was self-care. An investment in myself. And maybe it was, to some degree. But looking back, I can see what it really was: a kind of desperate bargaining with time itself.

When Creams Weren’t Enough

Eventually, the creams stopped being enough. The law of diminishing returns kicked in, and I found myself researching the next level: Botox. Fillers. The real artillery.

I remember my first appointment—the strange cocktail of excitement and shame. Like I was doing something slightly illicit, something I shouldn’t need. But the results? Undeniable. I looked… refreshed. Like I’d had the best sleep of my life and a two-week vacation. People noticed. They said I looked “well-rested.” (The universal code for “you got work done, and it looks good.”) That worked for a moment. And then I needed more.

That’s the thing they don’t tell you about Botox and fillers; they wear off. Your face doesn’t just stay frozen in that perfect moment. Time keeps moving, and your body keeps metabolizing, and suddenly you’re back in that chair, credit card in hand, chasing the same result. And like that, over and over. Each time, the bar seemed to move a little higher. The goalposts kept shifting. The thing I was chasing kept retreating. I needed a reset!

The Reset That Broke Everything Open

My reset came in the form of a move. Yes, I move a lot, it’s practically a personality trait at this point. But not all moves are resets; some are just changes of scenery. A new backdrop for the same life. This time was different.

This time, things didn’t quite work the way I expected or planned. Quite the contrary; everything went seemingly “wrong.” The logistics fell apart. The plans I’d carefully constructed crumbled. Nothing landed where it was supposed to land.

I spent months feeling like I’d made a terrible mistake. Like I’d blown up my life for nothing. But here’s what I’ve learned about destruction: sometimes it’s renovation in disguise.

Now that I’m above the battleground, now that I have some distance, some perspective, I can actually see it went right. It went the best possible way for me. The breakdown was the breakthrough. I just couldn’t see it while I was in the rubble.

The Wanderer Who Forgot to Wander

Here’s a confession: I never wanted to get too comfortable in this bio-sim. This life. This experience or whatever you want to call it. I never wanted to side with any philosophy, religion, group, custom, nation, country. I wanted to stay as I came: a wanderer just passing through. An observer. Someone who moves through the game without being owned by it. That was always the plan.

But somewhere along the way, I allowed my biological suit to rule over me. This body—this temporary vessel that I’m using to navigate this particular reality—became my identity. Its wrinkles became my failure. Its gray hairs became my shame. Its gradual softening became something I had to fight rather than accept.

This last move made me see my mistake. It made me stop. It made me look back. And it made me admit, with something approaching wonder, that my ways were wrong. In a game of time and change, I wanted something to stay the same.

Think about how absurd that is. In a universe defined by impermanence, where everything is born and dies, where landscapes erode, where civilizations rise and fall, I was over here demanding that my face remain unchanged. That these particular cells, this specific arrangement of collagen and elastin, resist the fundamental nature of existence itself (at least here, where we now find ourselves). That is not the point. That was never the point.

Learning to Float

I have to go with the flow, not row my boat upstream. This sounds like a cliché, I know. “Go with the flow.” The kind of thing you’d see on a yoga studio wall or a motivational poster featuring a stock photo of a river. But clichés become clichés because they contain truth, and this one contains a truth I’d been running from my entire adult life.

Rowing upstream takes so much more energy than floating downstream. I was exhausting myself fighting the current, fighting time, fighting the natural progression of things. And for what? To look slightly more like a past version of myself? To freeze-frame a single moment in a life that is, by design, constant motion?

I looked at myself one day—really looked—and said: I am okay with whatever my bio-suit looks like. It’s not me. I am the life itself. The unseen force running the machine. I was never born, and thus I can never die. My bio-suit was, and will. It has a beginning and an end, like all matter does. But I am not the suit. I am what animates it.

The Quiet Revolution

I started loving my new features. The lines that tell stories. The softness that speaks of years lived fully. I’m letting my grays grow out too, something that would have horrified the Cream Queen of five years ago. I’m not obsessively working out or dieting. I am just being, and I’m totally okay with it.

Now, before you think I’ve gone full granola and thrown out my entire bathroom cabinet: I’m not saying I’m never buying another facial cream again, or never working out again. No. That’s not the point either.

I’m just saying that these things no longer preoccupy me. They no longer take my time from the things I find more valuable. I’m still checking the advances in cosmetics, I still read and learn. I’m just not letting the changes I’m experiencing make me feel less worthy than a twenty-five-year-old with perfect skin. Quite the contrary.

Because here’s what that twenty-five-year-old doesn’t have: over five decades of learning how to come home to herself. The hard-won wisdom of a thousand mistakes. The peace that comes from finally, finally surrendering the fight against the river and letting it carry you where it will.

She’ll get there. We all do, if we’re lucky. If we live long enough. If we stop long enough to notice. The Cream Queen has abdicated her throne. And honestly? The view from here is better than any mirror ever showed me.

P.S. Speaking of moves and resets—if you’re someone who’s been contemplating a big change of scenery, or if my mention of moving sparked something in you, I recently wrote about my relationship with relocation and what it’s taught me over the years. You might find it resonates: https://wp.me/pgCoz8-lG