Holy fuck those hormones are a source of unbelievable energy and getting to that feeling you get naturally in your 20s and part of your 30s takes a lot more effort.
That you feel like you woke up in a completely different meat suit, than the one you were used to for 40 odd years. Nothing is the same. Clothes don’t fit the same, you can’t pull off the same styles you once could, you can’t bend or reach the same. Injuries seem to be delivered by someone with a voodoo doll of you and a lifetime of object jealousy. The view from the top of the hill, doesn’t look any different than the incline, they lied to you about that. Your brain and who you are feels the same as your late 20yo brain, but with some well learned lessons under its belt, so you kinda watch everything slide around you, it kinda feels like that time lapse of the fruit rotting. And time moves faster. When you’re 10, one year is a larger portion of your life than one year is, comparatively against 40 odd years, and it literally feels like that. It gets to a point where a year feels like a month. But your emotions and perspective on the world slows down and zooms out, and now you can see the forest for the trees. You realise you were a little brainwashed into thinking certain things mattered, that really really didn’t at all. The flip side of that coin, is knowing what really matters, and appreciating it so much more. You can’t achieve that without trying every biscuit on the tray. My you be blessed with the privilege to learn what it feels like to grow old with yourself. Not all of us do.
staying fit and healthy takes effort.
when you’re a kid, you’re active. you heal fast.
when you’re an adult, you are often sedentary, and injuries heal slowly. you have to work at it, either by choosing a lifestyle that facilitates it or by making time for it.
When you’re young you vow to yourself not to change which as it turns out isn’t that hard. Trouble is the world changes around you. Then you find yourself shaking your fist at the clouds and realize you sound like your parents
Watching my little babies run around the house as big kids is crushing the fuck out of my heart. I love them and they’re all healthy and happy and that’s great but holy fuck its going so fast and they’re gonna leave me and idk what I’m gonna do. Brutal shit.
It may get worse. My 3 have all grown up, graduated college and been quite successful. Unfortunately that success has led to job opportunities spread across the country… Oregon, Maine and Arkansas. Having them all gone and so far away is really, really hard. They are doing so well and I talk to them often, but I miss seeing them face-to-face and it’s rare to have them all together. It makes me very sad even though I’m happy for them.
I’m in the same boat, and it’s a mixed bag. When they were little I used to yearn for some time alone to do my own thing, and now that I have it I want nothing more than for them to be climbing all over me again.
At least you and I have each other ʕっ•ᴥ•ʔっ
Your body ages faster than your brain. Your brain says “go ahead, jump!” Your body says, “aw fuck!”
Young people getting dumber.
when you hit about 45, your mental age is currentAge-20 years-ish but doing an activity associated with mental age can come with some surprising consequences, mostly unhappy surprises at that. But as you continue to age you start accepting who are and start making less stupid choices that are associated with how you mentally feel.
You’re tired all the time. You realize there’s degrees of tired and you figure out how to do things at different levels.
I took off work this week and have napped almost every day… Still tired but in a better mood than I’ve been in in months. Sigh
Three main things from my personal experience.
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Sleep is shit. I remember when I was a teen or in my early 20s. I could sleep like a baby for 10 hours straight and wake up like tigger, raring to to, full of vim and vigour. Now I sleep in half hour bites. Each time I wake, I have to change position because some bit or other feels like it’s going to sleep (the irony!) or just hurts. At least once in the night I need to pee. My dreams, at this point, inevitably become some variation of me looking for a toilet and they’re always dirty or broken or something is wrong with them. I wake feeling tired, even if I get 10 hours in bed.
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Chronic arthritis. I’m not that old (late 50s) but my hips are utterly fucked. I can’t walk for more than a couple of miles before the pain starts. I can’t have steroids because (apparently) my hips might just fall apart. I can’t have hip replacement surgery (Fuck! That’s something old people have done!) because the arthritis isn’t currently sufficiently debilitating.
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People no longer notice you. When I was younger I was a good looking guy. I had girlfriends who made everyone’s head turn. Women fancied me, men were envious of me. Now, I’m just some old guy. It’s pretty fucking rare that anyone gives me a second glance. I’m just some old guy.
I have noticed this as well. I joke with the students that us old guys all look the same so they’ll have trouble telling us apart for awhile. But it’s true.
Until like 5-10 years ago, I’ve been traveling a lot, and in the evening, I’d take the tram or go on foot, sometimes 30-60 minutes, and go to bars, restaurants, no problem. In some city that’s completely unknown to me. After pretty heavy drinking and with just a few hours of sleep, I’d get up in the morning and travel on.
Nowadays, when checking in after, let’s say, a 2 hours journey, all I want to do is watch TV in my suite, end of story.
As to 3.: That can still happen, and it’s quite rewarding when it does. Just a few months ago, I’ve been turning heads again because I started dating a cover model for dentist’s office magazines. All eyes were glued to them wherever we went.
Then one day, you’re sitting all sobered up in some hotel room with what suddenly appears to be the phoniest person on the planet, and you start to realize beauty isn’t all there is.
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A lot has already been said, but one I didn’t see that I truly never expected is that I’m losing my grip strength. I drop things all the time now, and those pickle jars don’t open nearly as easily.
Nah it’s the cans that are getting tighter !
A lot of comments here with legitimate aspects of getting older, but not many that aren’t fairly common knowledge.
I offer the compressed sense of time as you age. Everything just seems to go by faster and faster leaving you wondering where all your time went when things are over.
My personal theory is that this is kinda like an “echo” in Minority Report.
Basically, when you’re still fresh, everything is new. Brain is like “Write this down! Interesting!”
But a lot of adult life stops being an adventure. You clock in and out, automatically say “fine thanks, you?” to the thousandth “how’s it goin” that year, drive the same route to and from the job, the grocery store, etc…
The brain has seen this before. The experience isn’t novel. It tosses it out with the trash. Why hang on to a million copies of
"Went_to_Work_did_stupid_job_had_reheated_chicken.mp4"? You also are getting crappier sleep, so things don’t record as readily to long term storage.Heck, I would clock in, hear the stupid “ding” sound, and legit not be sure if I actually just did that or if my brain was recalling the billion other times I’ve done it, 30 seconds later.
So anyway, I guess what I’m saying is, the key to a long experienced life might be to keep your brain “guessing” by switching things up, trying things differently, always learning new skills, trying to interact with different kinds of people.
The endless, rote, routine is a certain kind of hell.
Anyway, I’m no neurologist or anything, just another frustrated working class, but I think I’m on the money here lol.
Yup, a week is such a long time in school, I’m in my thirties and I see months go by so quickly
Losing friends is probably up there.
First you go to birthday parties, then party parties, then graduation parties, bachelor/bachelorette parties, weddings, your friend’s kid’s parties then funerals
I’m 60 and gave seen a lot of water under that bridge. A really good friend of mine who is in their early 40s and just got a cancer diagnosis this week. It never gets easier.
Well I’m guess I’m lucky that I don’t have friends.
work on that, if you can.
It never stops feeling weird and shocking to me how many people I’ve known that died before age 30.
My best friend since childhood died last year and that just destroyed me. Lost my mom just a couple months later which made things worse, but not as much as everyone thinking losing my mom was the only major loss I’ve had in the last year. I hate how much losing my friend seems to just get ignored when talking to even my therapist about all the things that has happened to me over the last year.
There’s more of the past and less of the future.
Your life isn’t going to get better. Those old “It gets better.” campaigns used to seriously piss me off. You are a slave to crapitalism until you die
I’ve got good news for you!
That about seems like the age you start truly internalizing “Lol all these things they told me were important, aren’t. And I don’t care lol.”
We have to spend so much time in that state of dissonance, deprogramming ourselves, realizing their best interests are not in ours.
So dementia sets in around 42??!???!
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My life got better as I got older, but I don’t live in the States, so maybe that’s a factor.
