Wrinkles — Not Just a Mark of Age

Some of you know my story. For those who don’t, here’s the beginning. My father took his last breath on December 30, 2017. He always said he wouldn’t live past 76, and he made that happen. He gave up on life, on family, on his only granddaughter.

At best, my father and I had a toxic relationship. In the months before he died, he would call me crying. He told me he didn’t feel like a man. He said he didn’t feel useful, or part of anything. He told me he had no purpose. And I knew what that meant, because I’d seen it before.

When I was young, my father used to bring me to work. There was a man there named Jack. He was much older than everyone else in the office. I remember his wrinkles, his grey hair, the smell of his cigarettes. Jack worked like a madman. One night, my father came home and told my mother Jack had retired. A month later, Jack was gone. My father said maybe Jack didn’t have anything left to live for.

How ironic that years later, my father followed that same path.

He had left the stock market business in 2008 but never stopped talking about how useless he felt. My father was 30 years older than me. He left behind a legacy of someone who gave up. A legacy of pain that he inflicted on me as a child. He never saw his granddaughter grow into the incredible human she is today, earning straight A’s and inspiring me to be a better man. He never saw my book published. He never saw me win fourth place in the world for that book. He never saw me receive one of the highest honors from The American Culinary Federation — The Presidential Medallion.

The only piece of advice he ever gave me was about taxes. He said, “I don’t mind paying taxes. It means I’m making money.” That stuck with me. Maybe because when he stopped making money, he felt like he had nothing left to contribute.

I look at pictures of him now and sometimes think it’s time to shave my beard. Part of me wants to move on from the marks he left on my soul. Maybe it’s because I see him in me, and I don’t want to become who he was at the end of his life. The grey in his beard. The age spots. The wrinkles. He used to joke that his best friends were his doctors.

Now I look in the mirror and see a man who looks more and more like him. A man who’s endured hardship. A man who has fought through dyslexia and ADHD. A man who’s battled depression and once nearly drowned himself just to escape the pain.

But I also see something else.

I see a man who’s overcome adversity. A man who’s fallen off the bike of life and climbed back on, bruised but determined. A man who’s fought to break a cycle of abuse and build something better with his daughter. A man who’s found the strength to talk about the things men aren’t supposed to talk about. A man who doesn’t care if someone calls him weak for speaking the truth.

I can see my skin changing now. The lines. The grey. The spots. I can feel myself evolving into a different part of my existence. Not weaker. Seasoned. The kind of seasoned that comes with earned wisdom. I can choose to see aging as decline or as proof that I’m still standing. Wrinkles aren’t a death sentence. They’re a record of the storms we’ve weathered.

Every wrinkle on my face is a scar, a story, a battle won. I’ve earned every single one of them.

My wrinkles aren’t signs of age. They’re proof I lived.