Looking Old? Maybe. Feeling Old? Not really.

I guess you don’t really see it until you see it. In a picture. Because, you see, I don’t see myself when I look in the mirror. When I look in the mirror I’m checking my hair, brushing my teeth. I’m looking at what I’m supposed to be focusing on, not me as a whole, just me in parts, I look like I’ve always looked like.

Or so I thought.

I don’t really feel old, but then I began taking pictures of myself. I mean, these are my eyes, but good God are those wrinkles around them?

And gray hair, I had my first sprout at the age of 19. It was a joke amongst me and my college roommates. But now, when I take a picture and really look, is that how many I have? Seriously?

And no matter how much weight I lose, or how many ways I may hold my face, I still feel like I have both no chin and a double chin at the same time, mainly because my chin bone doesn’t protrude, and I also have skin underneath.

I do my best to keep my arms toned, doing arm and shoulder exercises, keeping healthy as I get older, but I feel sometimes like I fight a losing battle with this one area near my arm pit, despite how much I may exercise or how many times I pick my children up. Do you know what I mean?

And the stretch marks. Hooo boy, the stretch marks. I am so proud to be a mother, so beyond ecstatic to be theirs and they be mine; to hold and squish them ’til my heart’s content, but dangit why couldn’t I be one of those women who could give birth without a single mark left on her?

You know, despite all of these flaws, all of these markings that are beginning to show my age and thensome, I don’t feel too badly, or that old. I know I can’t run a marathon, or perform a cheerleading routine start to finish without probably needing oxygen, but c’mon, I’m not in the ground, I’m ALIVE! I’m breathing (most of the time), I’m living day to day with my family, and despite the stretch marks, the wrinkles, the no-chin and gray hair, I feel pretty awesome, if I do say so myself.

And I can hold my own on the trampoline..

I mean, you’re only as old as you feel, right?

So take that, age! I can still do a toe-touch! Hee-yaah! (So what, it took me using the trampoline to do it?)

(Pssst! This was posted for Beth’s You Capture photo challenge. Today’s challenge was “Feel“)

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