Dear Bluma: I Never Thought This Would Happen To Me

Dear Bluma,

I'm angry about a few things. Like how my knees and ankles are starting to hurt, and when I bend down, I can barely get back up. I wake up at 3am with aching joints! I genuinely don't recognize the person creaking around in this body. Everyone keeps telling me that it's just what happens when you get older. But I just want to scream! Is that allowed?

— I Never Thought This Would Happen to Me

........

I Never Thought This Would Happen to Me, scream. Right now, if you need to.

Scream into the fluorescent void of a pharmacy parking lot while you wait on a prescription you never thought you'd need. You have my full blessing and a small standing ovation.

Your rage is grief, and your grief is rage.

That's how it seems to go in this midlife season where everything starts to change. You built forty-plus years of assumptions about what your body would always do, and it just suddenly changed the terms without asking you to sign anything.

Of course you're furious!

Every crone who ever mattered spent some time here first, dragging that fury behind her like a dead possum she's finally ready to bury.

And can we talk about "it's just what happens when you get older" for a second?

That phrase is a thought-terminating cliché dressed up as wisdom. It's the thing people say when they want you to stop feeling something so they can stop witnessing it.

It's invalidating and doesn't solve the problem. You're allowed to reject it. Getting older doesn't require you to go quietly.

I want to offer you something though, underneath the rage.

This body has kept you upright through decades of things that would've flattened a lesser machine, and now it's asking for different terms. That's a body that's tired and wants you to notice it's still working, just differently, like an old car that needs you to actually check the oil now instead of driving it into the ground and hoping for the best.

So here's your ritual, and I need you to actually do it, not just nod at it from the couch:

The 3am Council. Next time you wake up aching, sit up, put your feet on the floor, and have a word with your knees directly. Out loud if you can manage it. Whisper if the walls are thin.

Tell them what you told me. That you're angry, that you didn't expect this, that you miss the version of yourself who could bend down without a countdown timer.

Then say this, even if it feels ridiculous: "I'm retiring the body that used to be. I'm hiring the one I've got."

Let your body know you're still in this together, just under new management.

New terms usually mean new requirements. Strength, mostly, because muscle is what holds your joints together like a good bra holds up everything else. Movement your knees actually like. Whatever your bones and hormones are asking for these days.

Find yourself a doctor who treats "you're just getting older" as the start of a sentence and not the whole diagnosis, someone willing to actually look instead of shrug.

You deserve real answers, not a shrug in a white coat.

Seasons change. So do knees.

Just remember, you're still running this operation, ache by ache.

Accept the ache. And then just keep moving!

With lipstick and stardust,

Bluma 💋✨