I think of this sometimes, the once beautiful woman said, when I hear young women complain about how, wherever they go, guys leer at them or make catcalls—all that coarse, unwanted attention. And I get it, she said, because I used to feel that way too. But show me the girl who’ll be saying years from now, Sing hallelujah, I’m so glad that never happens to me anymore! It’s like menopause, she said. No matter how much of a relief it might be not to have to deal with menstruation anymore, show me the woman who greets her first missed period with joy.

I remember, the elderly and once beautiful woman said, after I reached a certain age it was like a bad dream—one of those nightmares where for some reason no one you know recognizes you anymore. People didn’t seek me out or try to make friends with me the way they’d always done before. I’d never been in the position of having to work at making people like and admire me. Suddenly I was all shy and socially awkward. Worse, I started to feel paranoid. Had I turned into one of those pathetic people always trying to get others to like them when everyone knows that that’s just the sort of person other people never do like?

One day my son brought home a friend, the once beautiful woman went on, and I happened to overhear her say, Your mom’s kind of weird, isn’t she. To this day I’m not sure what the girl meant, I never did get to the bottom of it, but it threw me into a crisis. Around that time I started to withdraw. I mean, I still went to work and took care of my family but I did less and less socializing. Also, though I never got fat, I stopped wearing makeup and I stopped coloring my gray hair.