Still A Work In Progress (Apparently)

Part two of a three-part series on midlife, following This Is NOT the Life I Ordered

At the end of my last post, I said some things had settled.

This is about the ones that haven’t.

I thought once you reached a certain age, you stopped caring quite so much about how you looked. Not in a careless way — just a dignified, unbothered, above-it-all sort of way. The kind of woman who owns one good coat, wears sensible shoes, and isn’t quietly scanning reflective surfaces.

Apparently not.

Because here I am, back on Mounjaro.

This is not an announcement, a confession, or an invitation for opinions. It’s simply another item on the list of things I didn’t expect to still be under active review at this stage of life — alongside housing, money, and the exact shape my future was supposed to take.

I never imagined I’d feel so tethered to my appearance. I was supposed to be wiser than that. More evolved. Immune to the quiet panic that arrives when clothes feel tighter or photographs feel unkind. The kind of panic that doesn’t shout, but whispers: this isn’t how it’s meant to go.

What unsettles me most isn’t the wanting. It’s the monitoring.

The constant, low-level assessment. How am I holding up? What needs fixing now?

And then there was the clinic.

My first appointment for Botox was, in fact, booked as an appointment for filler. I’d never had any tweakments before — not Botox, not filler, nothing. This was me dipping a very tentative toe into unfamiliar territory.

The nurse took one look and gently explained that filler wasn’t a good idea. My skin, she said, wouldn’t “hold” it properly. It would simply… sag.

Sag.

Apparently, my face lacks the structural optimism required for filler.

Which was unexpected.

Not because I was anticipating an ego boost — I’m not delusional — but because I’ve always had good skin. Clear skin. Everyone says so. Genetically, the women in my family have aged well. My nan’s skin was remarkable right up into her nineties. Ninety-two, glowing, barely a crease. I had quietly assumed those genes had been passed down.

What I wasn’t expecting was, “You’re too saggy for fillers.”

My sensible plan — formed before anyone had looked too closely at my face — was to thank her, go quietly away, contemplate the advice with dignity, and perhaps rebook another appointment at some undefined point in the future.

Instead, I found myself saying, “Is there anything you can do today?”

Oh how the mighty fall.

The nurse obliged.

I left £500 lighter and clutching a two-week wait while the Botox was supposed to do its quiet, magical work.

Those two weeks were… instructive.

I became discreetly obsessed with the mirror. Looking, but not looking. Catching my reflection in shop windows, bathroom lights, car mirrors — then pretending I hadn’t. Nothing seemed to be happening. Or perhaps it was. It was hard to tell. Which, I later realised, is the point.

I didn’t tell my daughter. Or my two closest girlfriends.

Not because I was ashamed — at least, not consciously — but because I was waiting. Waiting for the moment when someone would say something. Anything.

"Wow".

"You’re looking great".

"Have you done something?"

Nothing happened.

No comments. No raised eyebrows. No casual compliments dropped into conversation. Life carried on exactly as it had before, my face apparently unremarkable enough to pass through the world without comment.

And that told me something.

Either no one looks at my face as closely as I do — which is almost certainly true — or there was so little visible change that it barely registered. Perhaps my skin really is as good as people have always said it is. Clear, resilient, quietly holding its own.

Or perhaps the more honest answer is simpler still.

No one really cares that much.

Not in a cruel way. In a liberating one.

Most people aren’t scanning my face for improvements or declines. They’re not clocking millimetres or symmetry. They’re busy with their own reflections, their own private negotiations. I am both the subject and the auditor here — marking my own work far more harshly than anyone else ever would.

And somewhere in those two silent weeks, waiting for a verdict that never came, I realised something uncomfortable: I wasn’t really waiting to look better. I was waiting for confirmation that it had been worth it. That I’d made the right call. That someone else would quietly absolve me of the decision.

When no one did, the question shifted.

Not “Do I look different?” But “Why did I need anyone to notice at all?”

And maybe that’s the real midlife reckoning — not whether we change, but who we’re waiting to validate it. Whether the choices we call empowerment still quietly rely on an audience. Whether peace is something we achieve through intervention, or something we allow when we stop performing the audit.

I’m not chasing perfection. I’m negotiating peace. And sometimes that negotiation involves tools I once swore I’d never touch.

Or perhaps this is simply what clarity looks like at this age. Not certainty. Not arrival. Just awareness — seeing the pattern while you’re still standing inside it.

This is the second piece in a short series about midlife — not as a crisis, but as an audit. The constant, low-level negotiations we make with our bodies, our money, and our expectations.

The first was about the life I assumed would simply arrive. This one is about the quieter reckoning — the monitoring, the adjusting, the moments we realise how much of the work is internal.

The final piece is about money. Not in spreadsheets, but in meaning. What it represents, how it shapes our choices, and the stories we tell ourselves about security and worth..