Gerascophobia: What it feels to age on the wrong side
Whenever I tell people I hate being old, they laugh. They assume it is me trying to sound funny or stupid. It’s not even time to get started on how I don't take kindly to being called the latter, unless…
But sincerely I still do. And without a drop of shame, I’d steal your youth if I can. Being old reminds me of sucked up things devoid of moisture just like the dates we eat, of stale time, of the dread of falling out of tune with the times and jumping straight into a hip injury, or worse, arthritis. It reminds me of too much regrets, of winding down like the hands of a clock that are tired of being on time, of menopause!
In this light, every birthday does not coming with joyful noises and cymbals. It comes with plenty sullenness, with distancing myself from everything that doesn’t make me feel less loved and appreciated. The truth is that I tend to punish myself a lot, even for aging. I punish myself with misery and unhappiness. These things keep you sober and more distrustful of people and things. People and things hardly mean well.
On the phone with a friend yesterday, I was busy making jokes about menopause. The kind that gets you deflecting the main issue at hand, which is that she called to wish me happy birthday. There is absolutely nothing happy about getting old!
I like to think that being strict with myself doesn’t equate to being self-loathing. I mean I draft up chores and make myself do them because organization rolls with clarity. Or because I expect much more from myself. There is a supposed myth of about how I am both mother and child, how I spank myself hard enough with the left hand and with my right dig up a fertile ground to bury my tears.
Back to the call, I told this friend how I feel about menopause looming outside my door, said it like my favourite line from a song. And as an extension of this dry joke, how it shouldn’t just happen like bad news but should come slowly, like something easing itself into something else that is lubed up so it doesn’t hurt much. I no longer want a life that hurts. I have been living it for a few years and I tell you it’s no joy. Casually joking about feeling and looking homeless in a tiny voice that anyone barely hears is not what you do with a sound mind, or about how anxious I get with money and the ways to spend it.
Aging magnifies the implications of lost dreams, of failing to measure up, of being scared and doing nothing, or losing myself the way I assume to have lost every trace of optimism and hope. One good news is the tide, and this sea that carries me flows with the East wind.
I just want to be free, not old, not wrinkly, not broke. Just free. And I guess this body wants these things too.
