Hellraiser
by Lisa Lucas
While the world continues to go to utter hell, I can’t see myself writing about zucchini bread this week. I’ve been having deep thoughts lately surrounding recent career decisions as well as the pedophilic patriarchal beauty standard and feeling like, at fifty-nine years old, society is suggesting more strongly than usual that a woman like me should disappear.
Not physically, of course. Or maybe? I am a breathing, thinking, working and sleeping (barely) person/human woman. But symbolically, the expectation becomes clear, we need you to fade into the background. The message is subtle at times, but relentless. And while I’m slathering on my yam cream and 40 SPF sunscreen every morning, the mirror looking back at me says…Your usefulness has expired. Your beauty has expired. Your relevance has expired. Thank you for your service, now please step aside.
I still feel like myself, an old crone since the age of eight, the same curious and creative person who likes to read books, listen to music, and make elaborate dutch babies for Sunday brunch. I still love more than anything to laugh, to get excited about ideas and stories for films and episodic series. I stay up way too late knitting and watching dramatized historical fiction. I love to cook. I read poetry. I listen to independent news sources every day. I am politically active in my community. I love my family and friends dearly. I still feel hip, interesting, alive in the ways that matter. I feel, ironically, dare I say it, sexier than I ever have? I am in love for the first time in my life. And that is so cool and it’s the best and also new for me still. But not youthful. It’s mature and intense. Wild and free. Meaningful and fated. I am aware and conscious that the internal light inside me has not dimmed, just because the outside world has decided to measure my value by not being young anymore.
My youth, as culture defines it, is fading, with wrinkles and menopause and gray strands of hair. And yet I am still the same person who has lived, loved, worked, raised children, survived immeasurable heartbreak and betrayal, built friendships and businesses, developed opinions about the world. This person, in my soul, did not suddenly vanish on my last birthday.
Am I crazy or have the last few years worth of conventional job applications for positions that aligned almost perfectly with decades of experience been systematically deleted with the stroke of an AI generated selection algorithm? Roles where leadership, wisdom, and institutional memory should have been assets. Jobs where the qualifications matched to the letter with the work I had spent years mastering.
“We’ve decided to move in another direction.” “We’re seeking a different fit.” Sometimes there is no response at all. Sometimes there is an odd, passive aggressive handwritten card sent with “thanks” for applying? Ageism rarely declares itself directly. Instead it hides behind phrases about “energy,” “fresh perspectives,” or “culture fit.” It’s illegal (still) to say what they really want to say.
We’re sorry but…you are a woman who is too old.
I laugh thinking how the latest selection committee people don’t know me at all. They don’t realize that I get Gen Z more than the millennials who are doing the hiring. I have two Gen Z sons who respect me and we talk. About everything. We have a lot in common. Ageism affects everyone eventually, but for women it carries a particular sting because female value, especially in American culture, has long been tethered solely to youth, beauty, and reproduction. When we are young, we are sexualized. If we are mothers, we are praised for sacrifice and caretaking. But once the years move beyond having babies and the male gaze, society suddenly seems unsure how to categorize us. Women who once contributed fully to professional life as well as the one at home find themselves slowly edged toward the margins.
Our wrinkles are treated like warnings instead of records of a life well lived. Our voices become complaints. Our experience becomes baggage. God forbid we insist on remaining visible, only to be framed as difficult, bitter, or irrelevant. Here is what makes this narrative so bizarre. Women my age remember the promises that were made. We remember the moments when the country congratulated itself for progress. We remember the speeches about equality, the policies that were supposed to change workplaces, the assurances that the next generation would have it easier. Women were told sexism was a thing of the past. That inequality was exaggerated. That discomfort in the workplace was simply a misunderstanding or a personal attitude problem.
At fifty-nine, the ability to recognize gaslighting becomes a kind of superpower for me. Older women interrupt the collective amnesia. And because we remember, we are harder to manipulate. For decades many of us spent our lives working while caring for others. Our identities were often shaped around those responsibilities. We showed up. We did the all of the work. We sacrificed time and energy to keep life moving forward for everyone else. Then something shifts. Children grow into adults. Careers reach turning points. Caregiving responsibilities evolve. Then suddenly, for the first time in many years, space opens. Inside that space emerges a question that can feel radical in a culture that expects women to put themselves last.
What do I want now? How do I want to spend the next ten to twenty years? The answer for me is always some form of, I want to make it count.
I am being pushed, perhaps even guided by the universe, toward continuing to create my own work as an artist. If society rejects my presence in roles of influence, then I will create influence in ways that cannot be filtered through hiring committees. Maybe that is the path I was meant to take all along. I realize I have become inconvenient to the patriarchy.
Sometimes (lately) I stand in my backyard on certain evenings, look up at the sky, and silently shout into the void: I am still here!
I am fortunate to have a partner (who is a goddamn unicorn) beside me, with whom I continue exploring life. I am blessed with adult children whose journeys unfold in ways that bring pride and wonder. I adore my friends and colleagues, with whom I get to do incredible work, share stories, laughter, commiserate with over the state of the world and support one another.
There are so many more books to read, so much art to make, infinite conversations to have, incredible food to eat and adventures to be on. This is not the end of anything. It feels like a moment of clarity. There is less patience for nonsense. My closest friends and I have become living archives of resistance. We are not easily intimidated anymore. I am not interested in disappearing. I am interested in remembering and being in the present. I am interested in telling the truth. The internal fire that drives my curiosity and creativity does not vanish on schedule. I am not dead yet. Not even close. Life is still unfolding. And I am certain, the best is yet to come.
And as long as I continue to breathe in this body, the voice inside it will continue speaking. I refuse to shrink myself simply because my face shows the passage of time. I was a club kid for God’s sake. I was there at the dawning of punk rock and new wave. This rebellious feeling has never stopped, this questioning of authority. And guess what, I don’t give a fuck anymore. And when my 100th birthday arrives, when I do finally shuffle off this mortal coil, people will remember that I was here, that I spoke up, that I created, that I loved, that I refused to disappear just because society told me it was time.
Mark my words. I’m gonna be a hellraiser until the very end.
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