I recently had a guy tell me that the reason I’m so bitter all the time is because I’m old.

You got me.

Yup, I’m basically an old woman.

I’m 28 years old, after all. And I only have just a year and a half left before I hit 30.

I can already feel it, you know?

I can feel my only value in this society — my looks and fertility — slowly but surely fading away. With each day. Each second, really.

And I can feel the breath of the patriarchal monster over my shoulder.

He’s actually been following me since I turned 25, always lurking in the shadows and waiting for the moment when he can finally take me away to the Old Women’s land.

My days are numbered, I know.

And I made my peace with it. Sort of.

Expiring is no fun

That’s just how it is when you’re a woman.

One day you’re 12 years old, and your uncle can’t help himself around you, and the men passing you by on the street call you sexy and hot, and your male teacher says he can’t focus when your skirt is too short or your top too tight.

And then the next day, you’re 28, and you feel sorry for that girl you used to be who didn’t really know what to make of those comments and behaviours, and although now you know and you finally found your voice, it doesn’t matter anymore.

Because whatever you’re feeling and thinking now is irrelevant.

You’re just bitter.

You’re just jealous.

You’re an older woman now. Apparently.

And then the patriarchal monster comes in the middle of the night, shoves you in his ice-cream truck he also uses during the day to lure little girls in to tell them that it’s perfectly normal that all these older men behave like this and that’s it.

Your hair instantly turns grey. Your face becomes all wrinkled and soggy. And you can’t remember the last time you didn’t feel this angry and bitter and grumpy and mean.

And just like that — you’ve officially expired.

Like a pot of out-of-date greek yoghurt, you’re off the shelf forever. At least according to our beloved society.

I’d do anything to turn back the time

Look, if you told me I could turn back the time or at least avoid expiring so soon, even if it meant I had to do something weird or illegal or both, I definitely would.

Because let’s be honest — who am I without my youthful looks and hundreds of thousands of fresh eggs happily jumping around in my ovaries?

Nothing, really.

Even at the peak of my fertility and beauty, I barely counted as a human being. In my home country, a fetus has more rights than I do, after all.

So just imagine now.

But all this growing old, it’s such a shame, though.

I was a really smoking hot pre-pubescent girl, you know. Just ask my uncle, and he’d be happy to confirm that.

But unfortunately, unlike men whose lives aren’t subject to the same schedule and cut-off point and who age like fine wine and get to be silver foxes when they’re older, women become old hags instead.

So, obviously, I’d do anything to avoid that fate.

I’d sleep with every man or woman in Jeffrey Epstein’s little black book of sex offenders, paedophiles and other lovely people. I’d watch every single Adam Sandler movie. Twice.

I’d even go as far as to admit that feminism was always about female dominance and control, and all these decades, we’ve just been secretly planning how to take over Earth and send all men to Mars in one of those Jeff Bezos’s phallic-shaped space rockets.

And then maybe, if I’m lucky enough and the patriarchal monster agrees to release me from his grip, provided I’ll ‘age gracefully’ thanks to a myriad of expensive surgeries, treatments, and cosmetic products relentlessly pushed on by the beauty industry, I can come back to a greater society.

As an even bitter, older woman having a mid-life crisis.

Or a MILF.

Yup, that’s pretty much all of my options.

Living in a patriarchal, youth-obsessed culture is hard

The sad truth is that even if I’d manage to come back, I suspect my life wouldn’t exactly be all sunshine and roses. I’d probably have to cope with the fact that in the eyes of some men or younger people, I’m basically a carton of spoiled milk trying to get back on the shelf that only they can occupy.

Don’t believe me?

Just look at what happens to older women in the spotlight when they try to do that.

They’re often mocked, ridiculed and criticised.

Because they don’t ‘know their place.’ Or because they’re trying too hard to hold back the hand of time. Or not hard enough. Or they’re acting inappropriately for a ‘woman of a certain age.’

When Madonna started being active on Tik Tok, the Internet was flooded with all sorts of nasty comments, mostly about her looks. Some people suggested she had a face of a dead person transplanted as her own. Others that she looks good for her age if her age is 2700 years old vampire who eats babies and small animals alive.

How nice of them.

So maybe, I shouldn’t even try to come back from my exile? Maybe I should accept my fate and disappear into oblivion once my time comes up?

Just like many women before me, and probably many after me.

That is if we don’t do something to combat this combination of ageism and misogyny. And if we don’t finally recognise that perhaps women’s only purpose here isn’t to be objectified and sexualised by the other half of the planet and pop out one baby after another until the day we expire.

But that’s probably too much to ask, right?

Yup, I thought so, too.

Let me go back to baking some biscuits for the patriarchal monster then. Maybe he’ll go easier on me if I at least have something left to offer when he comes over.

On a more serious note, I find it ridiculous that some people — mostly men, though, from what I’ve noticed — use ‘old’ or ‘middle-aged’ to insult women. It feels like it’s somehow supposed to put me back in my place.

And dismiss whatever I’m talking about as ‘irrelevant’ because I’m just bitter and about to expire anyway.

But personally, I take it as a compliment.

All of my favourite writers — on this platform and outside — are women older than me. I love reading their stories and learning from their broad perspectives on life and all the experiences they’ve had.

They’re incredible. And we, the younger generations, have so much to learn from them.

But I also find it ridiculous that sometimes when people find out how old I am, they immediately tell me how good I look ‘for my age.’ Sigh.

We really believe women expire in their late 20s, don’t we?

Well, spoiler alert: we don’t.

But, of course, I’m saying that because I’m old and bitter. Although I bet if I wrote the same thing ten years ago, I’d be dismissed, too. Because I’m too young and naive to understand any of that. Right.

As a woman, you’re always either too young or too old for things because the perfect age is when you’re a man.

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