Going grey when you expect to live forever
..and an Australian author who writes about the Tasmanian wilderness
When I was 28, I noticed my first grey hair. Jokingly, I told my new husband — “my first ever grey has arrived the year we got married”. We laughed casually and got on with our day.
In our twenties, our joints lubricated and our lower backs supple, it was not a threat, lesser so one of merit. It was one grey hair in a forrest of black— one flick and it vanished. An anomaly, a rare sighting, an imaginary friend.
A decade later, that first reclusive grey is multiplying. Where it once shyly broke ground, there are bunches more snaking out in solidarity — inevitable, extroverted, hard to silence.
They’re posing an open challenge to that premise we all know well —‘it will never happen to me’. Greying will not happen to me, dental plaque will not happen to me, accidents or deaths or bad breath or public crying — will. not. happen. to. me.
But it is. And before being quick at fight or flight, i’ve been observing myself like a cat in the curtains. Simultaneously, i’ve also observing the hairlines of other people — people in my art class, on my street, at the school yard waiting for the bell to go off. The sweet-smiling barista, the fruit shop lady with triceps, the hottie at the rowing machine breaking a sweat on the Easter long weekend.
The thing I feel above everything else when I see greys in the wild now is a sense of representation. Same as I feel when I see myself up on a stage or a TV show or in public office or in the social media mainlines.
I’ve spent a lot of my growing years hiding one thing or another. At different stages of my life, I was hiding different things. My sense of humour, my appetite, my body hair, my leaking ceiling. My fears, my fumbles, my embarrassments, my heartbreak. My bad jokes, my thinking time, my sensitivity. Patting and shushing and fussing and tweezing — trying to make myself bend into a shape that was ok, accepted, common. Beautiful, loved.
Seeing the colour of your skin or the dynamics of your family structure, your sexual orientation or the diameter of your thighs not just represented, but celebrated in the mainstream has an incredibly uplifting quality. Having benefited from it over the years, I have a instinctual urge to pass it on.
So instead, observation is where it’s at for me this time. Like most journeys, I don’t expect this to be smooth or linear. Some days I don’t immediately recognise myself greying as I appear in photographs, or find the contrast between a crop top and silvers too much lot to process. On those days, I remind myself that one of the glories of the times we live in, is the understanding that not everything is a binary. In fact most things are not and thrive in somewhere on the a spectrum. I also use those days as an invitation to play — I’m a new and proud owner of a curling wand that I sue to tease ringlets into pieces of silver.
Above all, while I’m still deciding my next move — if there is one at all— i’m giving myself the time and space to work through it at my own pace.
Recommendations and discoveries from the week
A song I’ve been listening to on loop
I’ve been tearing through Limberlost at bedtime, in waiting room and trains, and every single time I want to reach out for my phone. It’s rich and layered and complex and fills your head with pictures saturated in emotion. I now love discovering Australian authors as much as I love finding Indian authors, so finding Robbie Arnott has been a special treat.
Robbie Arnott That’s all from me for this week, folks.
Have a beautiful week, wherever you are.
x
Som