It’s taken me a while to put pen to paper (fingers to keyboard) about this, because I don’t deal well with rejection. When I say, “I don’t deal well”, I mean I may as well book a flight to Switzerland and jump in a Dignitas booth (in my head you voluntarily slip away in a booth like the soundproof one they used to use in Mr and Mrs, I have no idea how it actually works) so painful is my sense of unworthiness. My lack of value.
A couple of weeks ago, I received a rejection which was explained (the rejecter thought giving me an explanation would help… I know they genuinely thought they were doing a good thing by telling me this, but it definitely makes it worse) with the words “audiences like young people.” Even as I write that now, I feel humiliated and embarrassed. Like I’ve been making a fool of myself this whole time. Have people simply been being polite, then? I’ve been right all along? I actually HAVE been kidding myself? That little voice in my head that never stops telling me how rubbish I am at everything has been having a field day: laughing her ass off and repeatedly shouting, “I told you so!” at me. So I went to ground and licked my wounds for a while. Actually, I really hurt myself at the gym (never go to the gym angry, like you should never go to the supermarket hungry), ate and drank too much, and decided to give it all up, accept that all I was good for is sitting on the sofa watching Ant and Dec or whatever it is people in my decrepit state are meant to be doing, and wait to die. I am really, really good at feeling sorry for myself. The best.
On a side note, I visited a friend so that I could pour out my woes. She tried to make me feel better by telling me about a bizarre dating app experience she’d had. A guy who had seemed lovely (frankly too good to be true) told her he’d like her to take a dump on him. I’d been saying for a while that he was bound to show his true colours eventually… turns out they were brown. “See?” she said. “Could definitely be worse!” My drunken, tearful response? “At least someone wants you!”
That was a new low.
Then two days ago I decided to get a grip. I don’t find this easy—it’s been especially difficult as when I tried to reorder my anti–depressants three weeks ago that I’ve been taking every day since 2020, I was told there was no record of me ever having had them, even though I’ve been on and off them since 2000—but that’s by the bye. Getting a grip is hard, isn’t it? You have to wade through all the shit you’ve told yourself as it insists on continually nudging you, trying to ignore it even though it’s making you feel utterly horrid, and pretend you’re absolutely fine. I imagine going for a swim in the sea at Bognor Regis is a similar experience. Because it’s all still there, the shit—the insecurity, the fear, the self–loathing. “Audiences like young people” is still there, swirling around in my head and sitting there in a message on my phone.
Ugh.
Nevertheless, I AM “a woman of a certain age.” I can’t do anything about time. I can keep trying to look younger (part of my meltdown included spending money I don’t have on getting some “aesthetic procedures” done and frantically googling the cost of mini–facelifts with before and after pictures from various clinics) but, ultimately, I am now the age that Rue McClanahan—the actress who played Blanche in The Golden Girls—was when the series first aired.
Fuck’s sake.
However, I’m also younger than Tess Daly, Claudia Winkleman, Elizabeth Hurley, Naomi Campbell, Jennifer Aniston, Kim Cattrall, Gillian Anderson… and audiences quite seem to like them. Or maybe I’ve got that wrong. Or maybe it’s only comedy where it’s important for performers to be young. Or maybe older audiences don’t want to see themselves represented, and laugh at relatable experiences, because they’re too busy waiting for death? Maybe that’s a thing.
Right. I have shit to swim through and stuff to do.
Here goes.