THAT'S NOT ME!!

Anyone who has been around small children recently knows that there is a popular series of books entitled “That’s Not My….”(kitten, car, dinosaur etc) which invites the child to know their own something-or-other by touch. Some enterprising publisher ought to bring out a series for older adults which would include “That’s Not My Face”, “That’s Not My Body” as well as (for the demented) “That’s Not My House/Son/Husband”. I might get to the stage where I only know something by touch, but right now it is hard enough just looking in the mirror and wondering who I am.

There’s always been a difference between who I see in the mirror and my inner self. So much, so familiar. But to see in the mirror a square jaw (like my father) rather than my known oval one, a shortened frame (like my mother) rather than my tall one, is little short of peculiar. It feels like a sudden alteration, but it can’t be. Given that this is the product of my life’s use and misuse of my body, it reflects more of the real me than it ever has and, I have to say, is a bit of a shock to the system.

This might be partly ‘malignant mirroring’. I first heard the term at a psychoanalytic lecture given by old-age specialists in 2002, where I listened with the nonchalance of my early 50s. ‘Malignant mirroring’ is a term used when an older person says they don’t want to go to a Day Centre because “it’s full of old people”. (Even if I’m in the relevant age group, I’m certainly not like them.) I recognise this self-deceit. Now, I have only to look at a recent photo to be shocked that that old person with white hair is me, and my friends who have wrinkles, thinning hair and paunches are JUST LIKE ME. Oh noooooooo! I am the ugly Queen in Snow White who thinks herself beautiful and envies the young.

I am told that some people with advanced dementia have so forgotten what they look like that they can be frightened by looking at themselves in the mirror, even wonder if a stranger has got into the house. How scary is that? So this process of Who Am I Now That I’m Old? is not going away. Better get used to the new me and the new old friends.

What then to make of this new person who has arrived in older age, who challenges the healthy narcissism of my middle age, and says “Look in the mirror, what do you see - do you recognise yourself? Are you old and wise, or just old? Are you ageing gracefully or just shrinking and wrinkling? If you still feel young on the inside, who exactly IS that old woman staring back at you?” The gap between my felt-self and how I am seen is beginning to open up again. (After all those thousands of pounds worth of therapy, I might have to ask for my money back!)

The old retort is that there is beauty in ageing – at best, a luminescence of being and a brightness of eye. On a good day, perhaps. But let’s get real: muscle wastage in the face, as elsewhere, makes a nose and ears more prominent; slackness of skin makes eyelids and corners of mouth droop; a chin becomes a jowl, and neck skin loosens. All predictable and all to be worn with grace. Do what you like with it – make-up, ‘work’, exercise, and thank you Zoom for ironing out some creases – but the body has to break down. Dealing with the stupidity of vanity is essential, but it’s the strangeness that is more difficult. Perhaps I should reword that as ‘strangerness’, because meeting myself in the mirror is not just a surprise, it’s a challenge to my very identity.

The remedies seem to be: don’t look in the mirror; smile often; spend time with other aged crones; keep the brain alive and the conversation agile; be compassionate to the very old; be grateful you have got this far. And love your life.