I always thought middle age would be softer.

I thought my hair would be poofy, my body would be poofy, everything would have an easy-to-sink-into quality to it, like an overstuffed chair.

With the exception of my body, I’m finding middle age to be hard and sometimes sharp – and that’s when I acknowledge that I’m in middle age in the first place. I am edgier. My opinions are strong. Getting through the day can be hard. I feel increasingly unsure about the world as I grow surer of who I am. It is a great reversal, as I used to be confident about what the world was all about and have a tenuous sense of self.

That crisscrossing of certainty and uncertainty, of confidence and grasping, of hard and soft runs throughout the new anthology Here in the Middle, which was released yesterday and to which I am…