Everyone has one of THOSE birthdays. The one birthday that, for whatever reason, hurts your feelings. For some it’s 25 or 30. For others it’s 40…or 70. Some harbour resentment for odd birthdays in between the milestones: 37, 43, 26. Eventually, we all run into a number that makes us feel the Christmas dinner weight of our mortality, the hornet’s nest fragility of our existence. We all eventually run into that birthday where we realize…we’re going to die. We realize it’s not a theory. We realize we’re not exempt. We realize it will be a surprise (more or less).

For me, that birthday is 50. And it’s bearing down on me. In fact, if 50 were a person, it would be talking to me like this:

Now, naturally, everyone else is thrilled that my birthday is coming up. They’re asking me what I’m doing. What item I’ll be crossing off my bucket list. What special, once in a lifetime thing I’ll be doing. At the very least, WHEN’S THE PARTY!? Normally, I love my birthday. I lovingly refer to it as Lisa-Fest and remind people how many shopping weeks they have left.

I have spent weeks trying to figure out how to celebrate this huge milestone…until  it dawned on me. How can I celebrate when I’m grieving? Now, please, spare me the “at least you’re alive” and “you’re only as old as you feel” crap. Remember…everyone has that one birthday that hits them like a kick in the ass with a speed skate.

I don’t want to pretend to be happy about turning 50 to make you more comfortable. I don’t want to pretend to feel happy about turning 50 to avoid being unhappy about turning 50. To quote the brilliant and cogent Carmen Spagnola, “Fuck Happiness.” (Follow the link to her video. It will change your life.)

I want to be unhappy about turning 50 until I’m no longer unhappy about it. I want to be unhappy about turning 50, so I can be happy about turning 51. Because here’s the thing…and don’t let anyone try to sell you a truckload of horse shit…when you’re 50, you’re no longer young. TRUTH BOMB. TRUTH. BOMB. I’m not saying I’m elderly. But…my. youth.is.over. done. kaput. finis. To suggest otherwise is a lie, a platitude, subterfuge, patronizing horse shit.

So, pardon me all to fuck if I take a moment to grieve that. I’m old enough not just to be someone’s mother, but their grandmother. So, yeah, the curtain has come down on my youth. The music icons of my teens and 20s are dead or grey haired, pot-bellied, jowly grandparents. Some of them have aged gracefully (Peter Gabriel, Annie Lennox, any of the Go-Gos pretty much). Others are just sad and pathetic (Adam Ant,  David Lee Roth, Axl Rose). I will soon work with people who were not alive when Princess Diana was killed. I remember how smug I felt when I told people at work I wasn’t alive when Kennedy was shot. They couldn’t imagine how that was possible. Now I know how they felt.

Our youth is like $100 life gives us to spend. And it seems like all the money in the world. I can tell you I spend some of it like a drunken sailor, thinking there was plenty more where that came from. I gave a chunk of that allowance away to people who didn’t deserve a dime and I should have given more of myself to others. I hoarded that allowance selfishly. And now here I am and the $100 I got for my youth is all spent. No do-overs. It is what it is, as they say. I’m no different than anyone else, though. Everyone will go through their books and do their own accounting. They’ll assess how well they spent their youth allowance. I could have done better. I could have done worse. Doesn’t matter. It’s all spent.

So, I’m going to grieve that time. And when I’m done I’m going to go back to the Bank of Life and pick up my next pay cheque…apparently my $100 middle age allowance is in….and I really need to pay attention to how I’m going to spend it.