The thing about being midlife is that we’re the teenagers of old people. We’re not young anymore, but we’re not old either. Just like teenagers — no longer children, not yet adults — we’re in transition. We’re saying goodbye to youth and bracing ourselves for old age. Our bodies, once again, are casualties in a hormonal war and we we also roll our eyes more then someone in their 30’s – see teenagers.

And I’m not here, in some a Instagram-ready voice, to convince you that it’s all grand. It isn’t. Just like your first round of being a teen — a lot of it is shite. The mood swings, the uncertainty, the weird new aches that seem to come from nowhere. The feeling that your skin doesn’t quite fit anymore — only this time it’s not acne, it’s gravity.

There’s this strange invisibility that creeps in too. You stop being noticed in the way you used to be — not quite dismissed, but bypassed. The world looks over your shoulder for someone younger, brighter, fresher. You start to understand what your parents meant when they said they still felt twenty inside. You do. You still feel like you, but somehow you’ve become the grown-up in every room.

It’s unsettling, this in-between. You catch yourself saying things your parents used to say. You start questioning manufacturers’ fondness for printing package instructions in minuscule white font. You see people your age doing TikToks and you think, good for them, but also… maybe sit down? You look at your hands and notice they’ve started to look like your mother’s. You look at your children, or your friends’ children, and realise they are what you used to be — the future.

But there’s freedom here too, if you can stand the shedding. You’ve stopped caring quite so much about being liked. You’ve learned how to read and leave a room, a job, even a person, if it’s not right. You start to understand that peace costs less than excitement, and that’s not a bad trade.

Midlife isn’t glamorous, but it’s real. It’s the remix of everything you’ve learned, with a new baseline of loss and clarity. You begin to see the horizon — not in a morbid way, but as a reminder: the clock’s ticking, so live while it’s still yours to live.

We are the teenagers of old age. Somewhat awkward, hormonal, moody, growing into something new. And just like before — we’ll stumble, we’ll change, we’ll sulk. And maybe, if we’re lucky, we’ll come out the other side wiser, softer, and still a little rebellious, with thighs full of patch marks.