Rocking the Second Act - Chapter One

Too old to be adorable, too young to vanish, too pissed off to play nice.

This started as a self-soothing daydream: women like me, too old to be adorable, too young to disappear.
Then it got louder. Messier. Fiercer.
Welcome to Rocking the Second Act.

Lost in the Fog

Veronica

I knew Mum meant well, but if one more person called me resilient I was going to hot-glue the word onto a massive, veiny d*ldo and mail it to every person who’d ever told me to “keep my chin up.”

Because resilient is just what people say when they want you to shut up and cope quietly, so they don’t have to do anything uncomfortable… like care.

“You’ve always been resilient, love,” Mum had said. “Just keep your head up.”
Right. My head was up, technically. My brain, however, had rage quit and was sulking in a corner like a crashed Sims character.

Since the fog set in, I’d gone from a woman with deadlines and projects to a 48-year-old single mum on the benefit, staring at blank documents while my old guitar collected dust in the corner. Lost my job, lost my edge, lost the thread of my own life.

My phone buzzed. Mara.

Fog’s so bad I just tried to put deodorant on my toothbrush, she wrote.

I barked out a laugh, the first real one of the day. Mara was one of my lifelines from a Facebook group called Menopause Matters — which was ironic, considering how little anyone in my actual life gave a single, solitary shit. Still, in that group, at least, it felt like we weren’t ghosts. We could say the quiet parts out loud.

I smirked, already composing a reply.

But, naturally, my phone buzzed importantly, startling any thoughts of Mara and the other women right out of my mind.

Reminder: Don’t forget to use your loyalty points!

Fantastic. Thank you, supermarket overlords, for reminding me I’d also forgotten to be a proper adult and buy groceries. Time to wade into the capitalist hellscape I call: The Supermarket, in Four Acts.

Act One: A Place of Suffering

Dinner. That’s what I was here for.

I pushed my cart under interrogation-room fluorescent lighting while a toddler shrieked somewhere in the distance. Immediate kinship.

Halfway down the pasta aisle, I froze. What the hell was I making? Stir fry? Tacos? A live sacrifice?

I fished out the shopping list I’d written in a burst of morning optimism.

Pasta sauce. Green beans.

Cool. Cool. And? Past Me had apparently decided that tomato sludge and questionable legumes were a complete meal. No context. No plan. Just… vibes?

“For fuck’s sake,” I muttered, staring at my own handwriting like a recipe might materialise out of sheer willpower. My mind stayed stubbornly blank, the prickle of rage-sweat already creeping up my neck.

Around me, people moved with irritating competence. Yoga Pants Millennial plucked items with the precision of a Navy SEAL. Young Guy tossed things into his cart like a cooking-show montage. And then there was me: overheated, frumpy, gripping my cart like a life raft while my shopping list mocked me.

Act Two: The Man Who Almost Murdered Me Over Spaghetti

While I was trying to glue my thoughts back together, a man in a crisp suit swooped into my personal space like a seagull dive-bombing a hot chip.

Brush of fabric, quick reach – and he snatched a box of spaghetti from right beside me. No “excuse me.” No acknowledgement. Just a swipe-and-vanish, like some boardroom cryptid.

By the time my mouth caught up to my brain, he was gone.

Act Three: The Parade of Youth & My Untimely Death

A trio of twenty-something women drifted past, laughing with the unbothered ease of people who’ve never Googled “why am I sweating this much” at 3 a.m.

They didn’t even register me. Not in a cruel way – just in a you no longer exist in our realm way.

Once, I was like them. Now I was background noise in my own life.

Something twisted in my gut – an aimless, bitter anger with no clear target. Time? My body? That bloody spaghetti man?

I swore under my breath, grabbed the first jar of marinara I saw, and lobbed it into my cart. Did I even have pasta at home? Who knew.

Act Four: The Pep Talk in the Checkout Line

In line, I glared at my phone, willing my brain to reboot.

Mara’s name lit up the screen: Fog’s so bad I put my keys in the fridge again.

I’d laughed this morning. But standing here, invisible and disconnected, I got it.

No one warns you about this part of life – the slow fade.

We weren’t meant to disappear. And I wasn’t going to. Not yet. Not today.

I tapped my loyalty card on the scanner with the confidence of a woman who had her shit together.

Which I absolutely did not.

But no one needed to know that.

Read Chapter Two- Cocktails, Chaos, and the Pursuit of Dick (or Lack Thereof)

❤️ Thanks for reading along here. If you’d rather curl up and scroll the chapters in one place, you’ll find them on Wattpad too.