Age is a Number, Old is a Lie

I remember, when I was younger, watching an episode of McGyver that freaked me out. In the episode, a group of scientists are developing a chemical that will make plants age quickly, so they can grow immediately and save starving children everywhere (I think they gave Monsanto ideas, used for more sinister purposes). Anyway, one woman gets trapped behind a glass door with the chemical released in the air, and in a matter of moments, she ages and dies, a beautiful young blonde to a withered old woman, while McGyver watches from the other side, helpless without his duct tape.

I feel like this is what happens in the world of fertility. By most accounts, I'm young. I haven't done many things I want to, like visit every continent or learn to sew. But in the fertility world, I'm reaching the end of my innocent youth. I'll be 33 next week, and suddenly I feel like the old spinster in a Jane Austen novel.

Because it seems, at 35, only two short years away, a magic light goes on. I go from being young to being old. There is no in between, which is where I feel I really am. At 35 you need special tests and they start questioning your egg quality and they stop telling you dismissively, "You're young, you have plenty of time."

That's just stupid, and I hope other women don't buy into it. Yeah, I get that things change as you get older. Maybe my eggs but also other things, that used to be perkier or prettier or less gray. But things don't change overnight. And everything keeps working. As hard as all this is, no woman needs to hear that on top of all the other stuff she can't control, she's too old. There is no magic light.