I spent most of my 35th birthday ugly-crying over the grey hairs I'd just noticed in my brunette bangs, like bleached tentacles rising from a dark sea. My friends' jokey texts welcoming me to "almost middle age" and "impending old-ladyhood" socked me in an unexpectedly tender place, a part of me that was achy over the fact that even if I still wasn't old, I wasn't exactly young anymore, either. I can't say when this fog of anxiety first rolled through my mind and smothered my better judgment — perhaps it came as the clock ticked down on 29, and I realized that there wasn't anything, really, that distinguished me from the legions of other women starting to see grays in their hairbrushes; wondering if they were just having a fluke cycle or entering the dreaded perimenopause; or unconsciously, yet earnestly, dropping the phrase "when I was your age" into a conversation with a 20-something co-worker.