This is a post I thought I would only write when I’m well into my 60s or 70s. I was wrong! For the aches of aging don’t only happen then.
It’s happening now as I cross my mid-50s!
In fact, the signs of aging have already emerged slowly and subtly over the last five years or so. I can even go as far as saying that it entered my conscious awareness sometime around the year I turned 50.
What were the signs?
Little objects like keys or clothes pegs slipping out of my grip when they never used to before.
Entering a room to retrieve something only to forget what it was I wanted within seconds of entering.
Hair that fall off and refuse to grow back. Leaving an ever-widening patch of (dare I say it?), baldness, that makes it look like I have a sunny-side-up egg on my head.
Waking up two days ago to find the lower calf of my right leg tingling with unexplained electric currents of sharp pain every other minute from my ankle all the way up my quadriceps. Which meant I was pretty much limping around in agony all day long! And it had to be a working day for me too. (The pain only really eased up this morning)
How about saggy skin? Or vile-looking varicose veins forming permanent rivulets on the back of thighs (shudder) and elsewhere on my lower limbs. Kneecaps that look so wrinkled when I’m standing you would think they were ugly pug necks I pasted on! Arm and back aches the next day after carrying heavy grocery bags home from the supermarket the evening before.
Symptoms of a tennis elbow for several months now that I still have no notion how it came about. (And no, I don’t play tennis!)
Need I go on?
Or are you still unconvinced?
Still think aging is no big deal?
According to WHO (World Health Organization), by 2030, one in six people in the world will be aged 60 years or over. The number of persons aged 80 years or older is expected to triple between 2020 and 2050 to reach 426 million.
Closer to home, some one in five persons here in my homeland were at least 65 years old last year. Come 2030, that figure drops to one in four.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out the implications of this on society and what it means for every living, breathing, human being on this planet in general, and in my backyard in particular.
Old people are nearly all we see and will see everywhere our eyes land.
Even when they land on a mirror!
How did it come to this?
When and where did my eternal youth disappear like a wisp of smoke?
The Reality, and Cruelty, of Aging In My 50s
The thing about being in one’s 50s is there’s still the illusion that I am fit, healthy and can pass off as vital and useful. Throw in some nifty dressing, aka Devil Wears Prada, and I can easily deceive myself into feeling like I’m still on top of the world.
Yet therein lies the hidden cruelty, as my experience these past five years as a 50-something year old has shown.
The ailments that assail my days this past half-decade, or even just this past week, is most certainly not some random or wild imaginations on my part. And neither are they the result of any paranoia.
They really happened.
And they continue to.
The most recent one that had me walking, no hobbling on one leg and a crutch, was no stroll in the park let me tell you! Nothing hits home more convincingly that you’re firmly on the path of aging and ‘old-dom’ than when you’re limping while the rest of the world zips past like they’re on roller skates.
It felt like the ultimate insult these past couple of days. Changing pants in a seated, rather than upright, position. Easing myself gingerly on and off the couch, careful to avoid putting any weight on the injured foot. Stuck at home with limited mobility and a bruised ego. Wondering every other hour if there is something more to this mysterious malaise than what I’m experiencing; is it a forewarning of worse to come?
And the other hours? Wondering what, if any, are the upsides to aging.
Sigh.
Looking, Feeling, And Owning Aging in my 50s
Just as I was again feeling despondent and self-pity this morning over a cup of coffee, what should I hear wafting from my kitchen radio but my fellow Gen X-er, dame Mariah Carey, belting out an old hit of hers called Make It Happen.
Never let it be said that I’m too stand-offish to accept advice from a peer (we were born in the same year). Especially one who’s a global sensation in music-dom!
In the song, the lyrics for the bridge go something like this:
I once was lost
But now I’m found
I got my feet
On solid ground!
Thank You Lord!!
If you believe
Within your soul
Just hold on tight
And don’t let go!
You can make it
Make it happen!!
Yes, though the aches and assaults keep coming, I can still plant my feet on solid ground. I’m not yet bedridden.
And yes, I do believe, as cliche as it sounds, that in the end, it’s mind over matter. That the only thing I still have agency and choice over is what I choose to think and focus on.
So if I focus on the insult of aging when these ailments assail to make me look (still decently) 40-ish but feel geriatric, then I’m doomed to despair and resignation. Which, as the experts will tell you, will become a self-fulfilling prophecy!
But if I focus instead on hope and belief that I’m still overall mobile and healthy, then I will continue to stay so.
No doubt in the years ahead, I’ll need to bookmark and revisit this post to remind me to think positive.
Even as, or especially as, the ravages and assaults of time continue to batter me from now til kingdom come.
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