Wrinkles, Pimples, and Other Thirtysomething Trials

I’ve been in my thirties for a year and a half, and I have been waiting for disaster to strike.

You see, every woman I know who is older than me has warned me—for the decade leading up to my thirties—of just what awaited me when I hit the dreaded 3-0. Overnight, I could expect: Instant weight gain as soon as I looked at food. Hangovers that took a week to recover from. Wrinkles that sprouted like weeds every night, no matter how much CoQ10 I applied or how much sleep I got. An inability to take up new sports or activities because my body had reached its physical programming peak. Disastrous side effects should I get pregnant. Gray hair that would start by tricking me with a strand here, a strand here, but would soon reveal a silver crown. A full-blown beard.

Age. Ugly aging. That’s what awaited me when I hit 3-0.

But none of this has happened. Sure, I’ve got a few more laugh lines, and I’ve been wondering if my surge in blonde hairs is nature’s gentle segue to going gray. And yeah, it’s taken a bit longer to bounce back from injuries than it ever has before. But I’ve also started playing soccer again after a fourteen-year hiatus. And my whole body loves it. I’ve lost more weight since turning thirty than I have in the entire three decades prior. And while the verdict’s still out on getting and being pregnant in your thirties, I’ve got plenty of happy and healthy mom friends to make me think that even that will be fine, should we be so blessed. The beard? Nowhere in sight.

There is, however, one side effect of thirtysomethingness that nobody prepared me for. My bones might creak a little, my hair might dwindle in luster, but in all other respects, I’m not aging. In fact, I’m experiencing a delayed adolescence. My dry skin has turned oily. Hormones surge for wicked mood swings. My braces ache and require regular waxing. And worst of all: Acne. I thought I was immune. A pimple here, a blackhead there. But never more than a freakish loner, easily popped and put in its place. But now, at 31, I own a whole arsenal of salicylic acid products. I'm even embarking on a new dermatologist-recommended skincare regime! Why? Acne. Full blown, recurring pimples, eruptions daily. On my chin, my nose, my forehead, my temples, my eyebrows. Too big to pop, too red to cover with a dash of cover up, and apparently too hearty for over-the-counter pimple busters. What’s a thirtysomething to do?!

It’s not so much that pimples are inherently traumatic. It’s just that, more than anything else—more than wrinkles or gray hair or love handles or achy joints—they mess with my sense of self. You expect all the rest as you age. You’ve seen it happen to everyone around you. It’s the natural course of things. But adolescence and all of its traumas are supposed to be long gone. You sigh with relief every time you reminisce on those god-awful years and realize you’ll never have to go through that again. Or so I thought. But here they are, right back at me. And worse than they ever were the first time around. In my real adolescence, I’d escaped the ravages of acne. I was always pimple-free. The good skin girl. In fact, I’d escaped most of the physical traumas of adolescence—the oily skin and hair, the tinsel teeth, the hourly mood swings. I’ve actually never known the person now staring back at me from the bathroom mirror—where I am spending way too many hours staring these days as I try to figure out where all these pimples are coming from—and I don’t know what to do with her now that she’s here. Sure, she gets me carded all the time (and for the first time ever, the look of shock when clerks/waiters see my 1977 birth date is not feigned), and sure, she seems to be staving off most signs of aging quite well. But still. Who is she? And why did she arrive twenty years too late?!

And I really don’t know what to do about these zits.