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Last week, I read Prozac Nation author Elizabeth Wurtzel’s essay in the latest issue of Elle. Although she didn’t call it such, it’s all about being Formerly Hot, as well as Formerly Crazy.

In the piece, lavishly written as is most of what she writes, she essentially says that now that she’s no longer a total nutcake, “both emotionally unkempt and mentally unhinged–deeply depressed, drugged, sensitive, and nasty all at once,” she’s also no longer hot, and hence no longer the sultry sexpot publishers want to put on the covers of her books to help sell them. (Not that she’s writing them anymore–she’s an attorney.) “Something has abandoned me,” she writes. “I don’t know what that thing is–they’ve been trying to jar it and bottle it for centuries–but it’s left, another merciless lover.”

It’s not that she was hot because she was crazy, exactly, although Lord knows there are those who find a dark beauty in lunacy. It’s more that the very time and experience that have rendered her a capable, sane, mature adult have also pushed her, she thinks, to the verge of no longer being someone you’d want in your bed. Youth is not wasted on the young, she writes. Maturity is wasted on the old. “Oh, to be 25 again and get it right,” she muses.

Please. Who got it right at 25, no matter what she looked like? Who ever gets it–”it” being the big stuff–categorically right, except perhaps in retrospect? Looked at that way, I’ll bet even Wurtzel would say she got quite a few things right. I remember envying her ability to parlay her  struggle with depression into a fabulous living when the rest of us writer types were doing the same dumb-ass self-destructive shit in our off hours while writing captions for $17K a year to pay the bills.

I went to my 20th college reunion this weekend at Wesleyan, in Connecticut, which was lovely. Much lower key than I’d expected, just old friends hanging out in the green grassy playpen we were all plunked in when we were 18, or old acquaintances pleasantly surprised that we had so much to discuss with people we hadn’t known that well back in the day. Whatever extremes of our tiny campus we thought we’d belonged in 20 years ago, we’d all moved figuratively to the middle, and talked kids and computers and hair loss and friends not present.

I wonder how many of my classmates think they got it “right,” at 22 or 25 or 35 or at any other time. Granted, people who come to reunions are contented enough with their lives to share them with those with whom they started out, all wide-eyed and full of P.C. certitude.

But I didn’t see a single person strutting around, chest puffed out, talking about how “right” he got it. Mostly, folks talked about the things they were glad they did, the things that didn’t quite pan out and the ones that kicked them in the ass but turned out to be a net positive.

I was a big bulimic mess in college, insecure about not having any one thing I knew myself to be good at, and for whatever reason was attracted to WASPy guys for whom I held little appeal. Over the years, I got it together. Time has been my friend, even if, sure, I don’t look quite so dewy.

A woman I adored–a brilliant, gorgeous, wickedly funny girl who drank a lot–told me she’s been sober 20 years, and how she and her second husband are building a life they can enjoy, rather than constantly striving. Over the years, she, too, got it together. She looked exactly as beautiful as before, but I’m sure she could point out a few blobby bits that weren’t there before she had two kids. Time is on her side, too.

And there were many more people present to whose turmoil I was not privvy in college. Over the years, they seemed to have become whole. Even those who weren’t known for screaming up at lovers’ dorm room windows or crashing their cars or burning themselves with cigarrette butts are not spared the stormy internal weather Wurtzel clearly kind of longs for, even though it’s the way she looked back when she was cuckoo that she claims to miss.

I suspect that those who think they got it “right” have simply found a way of looking at the things they’ve gotten wrong in a compassionate light.

And as for how they actually look to others, as in their physical appearance? Yeah, OK, we could all probably step it up with the sunscreen. Wrinkles, bad; melanoma, worse.

But for now, let’s just be glad things are easier, for those of us for whom they are. Getting older is not one long dance party. But no longer being a big old headcase is a joy, pure and simple. And that only comes with age.

Wesleyan University logo CC Wesleyan University

When I was just out of college, if someone asked me how I was, I used to give it some thought and answer honestly. “Yeah, OK, although I have to say, I’m somewhat conflicted about my desire to eat meat and my moral certainty that truly, there is no defensible rationale for placing humans above animals in the hierarchy of being. You know?” (Did I mention I went to Wesleyan? Before it was considered, like, a first-choice school? It became thus not long after I graduated, but I have decided my leaving had nothing to do with its rise it status.)

I quickly learned that out in the “real world,” that cruel, harsh place where there were things you had to do besides attend interesting classes and ponder your sexuality, unless the person asking how you were was your mother or a friend who genuinely wanted the answer, you were simply supposed to say, “Fine, thanks.”

It didn’t matter if you were deeply depressed about a breakup, the Rodney King beating, or Michael Jackson’s disappearing nose cartilage. “Fine” was what people generally expected to hear, and if you took too long to say that, their eyes started to glaze over and they shifted their weight as if they needed to pee. The appearance of competence in the real world (not to be confused with The Real World, which had not yet debuted) felt critical.

Of course, most of the people I mixed with back then were my own ageish, and so we were all in a big hurry to appear like we had it all together. I wanted to demonstrate, definitely to my casual friends but mostly to myself, that I was making good choices. So once I got used to reflexively saying I was fine, because that’s what people expected to hear, it became what I wanted to believe.

How’s the new job? New guy? New apartment? Oh, fine, good! I’d say, even if I had mixed feelings or anxiety, because stepping into a big steaming pile of feelings with someone who might be anticipating a simple “fine!” meant showing a crack in my facade. I wanted anyone else to think I had it all together in part because it helped me believe it, not to mention prospective employers. I didn’t want to look too closely. What if I didn’t have it all together? Would anyone want to be my friend? And if I didn’t have 700 friends, who would ask  how I was doing? If no one asked, to whom would I claim to be fine?

Life as a Formerly, of course, is different. I don’t feel as though “fine” has to be my answer anymore, no matter who is asking. That’s a huge relief.

Just today, a friend inquired as to my well-being. We’re both Formerlies, with kids and families and work to do and ceilings caving in, so she has no more time to hear my views on vegetarianism than I have to think about them. But because we’re Formerlies and she took the time to ask–given the fact that she has so little time–means she wants to know. I give it some thought.

In my head, I enter the data to do the calculus: health, job, blog, husband, marriage, kids, aging parents, fear of identity theft, weird formaldahyde smell in car, childrens birthday party, whether I bought the right mattress, perimenopause…clickclickclick…equals…

“Fine. I’m doing fine, thanks for asking.” And it was the absolute truth. And that’s all she wrote.

Photo by Greefus gone fishin CC