Can we all agree that time and gravity are extremely rude? I don’t recall signing a consent form to make parts of my body feel like they are laughing and pointing at me at all hours of the day.
The older I get, the more I relate to a nervous chihuahua: jittery, with decreased bladder control.
As someone who recently had a discussion with a friend about the pros and cons of buying a bread maker, suddenly finds the dads in Disney films hot, and now understands the appeal of naps, I can’t ignore the truth any longer: I am an adult.
This revelation feels like being slapped in the face with a dueling glove, with no hope for retaliation.
Many aspects of adulthood come tinged with that same sense of fear, loss, and lack of direction that overcame you as a child when you temporarily lost sight of your mother in a store, and adding aging into the equation feels like someone sneakily turned the difficult settings on the video game of your life up to “Expert” mode while you weren’t looking.
What are the two certainties of life, again? Death and taxes? I think we should add a third: death, taxes, and an innate internal sense of injustice that you, too, are being subjected to the ravages of time.
There are many joys of aging, too, of course. The instinctual panic I felt as a teenager to discredit my passions, joys, and interests out of fear of being judged has thankfully vanished into the ether, like a bad fart on the wind. My friendships are now beacons of love and support, as opposed to the weaponized insecurity ping-pong that I felt like a weary soldier in—the trench warfare of puberty, if you will. And I get the perspective and distance needed to begin unlearning painful ideas, lessons, and beliefs I internalized as a child.
Some constants remain. As a 13-year-old, I lived in fear of the opinions of other 13-year-olds. As an adult, I still live in fear of the opinions of 13-year-olds.
All in all, I suppose it’s a decent trade-off. Having my cake and getting to eat it, too, would be pretty nice though: all of the fun of aging with none of the exhaustion.
Being subject to the whims, tantrums, and gifts of the flow of time feels like traveling down a road lined with potholes, goodies, and surprises: you may stumble and fall a lot, but the journey remains worth the bruises.