How Old Are You in Your Head?

Atlantic staff writer Jennifer Senior is 53 in real life, but she says that in her head she’s “suspended at 36.” That was the age she was secure professionally but still full of potential, paired up with her husband “but not yet lost in the marshes of a long marriage.” In “The Age in Your Head,” which appears in the April issue of the magazine, Senior explores the discrepancy many of us feel between our real age and our “subjective age” and why experiences like a pandemic or trauma can freeze us in time.