You know you're getting old when..

[Lone Dog]

Originally Posted by Azalea

I loved threepenny bits

Who doesn't?

[gregarious_introvert]

^ Do you mean coins, LD, or is that rhyming slang?

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[Lone Dog]

^ I was going for the slang meaning.

[Azalea]

Originally Posted by gregarious_introvert

^ Do you mean coins, LD, or is that rhyming slang?

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I meant the real thing, don't even know what LD is.

[Gosties]

When you try to travel to a favored spot in the car.

That you have travelled to on motorcycle many times and take the wrong road. End up going up a private road towards a farm. That would not be so bad but the road was just a dirty muddy pit and somehow managed to get myself turned around and back down towards the road I should have taken.

Had visions at one point of the farmer pulling me out with his tractor but luckily not.

[gregarious_introvert]

Originally Posted by Azalea

I meant the real thing, don't even know what LD is.

LD was an abbreviation for Lone Dog, I was referring to his post; sorry for the confusion!

@Lone Dog, I knew you were! I'm not sure that sort of thing is appropriate here, young man!

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[Dougella]

You forget how old you are and it gives you a shock when you remember

[girlinterrupted]

You have to ready yourself for certain movements, like getting out of the bath.

Also that you find yourself checking there's nothing else you need to get while you're upstairs and about to go downstairs, or vice versa. Apparently aging takes a lot of planning, who knew

[limey123]

Originally Posted by girlinterrupted

Also that you find yourself checking there's nothing else you need to get while you're upstairs and about to go downstairs, or vice versa. Apparently aging takes a lot of planning, who knew

This!

[Azalea]

Originally Posted by girlinterrupted

Also that you find yourself checking there's nothing else you need to get while you're upstairs and about to go downstairs, or vice versa. Apparently aging takes a lot of planning, who knew

I did! As well as all that I have to take as few trips up the stairs as possible as climbing stairs can make me pass out.

[girlinterrupted]

Originally Posted by Azalea

I did! As well as all that I have to take as few trips up the stairs as possible as climbing stairs can make me pass out.

You poor thing, so scary!

In addition to having to work out what you may even possibly need to save on stair usage, another one is when you drop something or it falls to the floor and for a second there you find yourself wondering how much you actually need it or how urgently I did that with a pen earlier that rolled off the desk, decided it's not needed right now and it's still sitting looking up at me from the carpet now... and let's face it the trip down and back up isn't worth it until at least three things are down there

Also I saw this and had an OMG moment...this, this, 100 times this (although I had completely forgotten about it which is probably another sign!) :



Oh the momentary confusion followed by horror as the truth dawned the first time this happened

[gregarious_introvert]

^ I don't think my year of birth has ever been visible in a drop-down menu, I was already too old for that when the internet became available.

[Azalea]

Originally Posted by girlinterrupted

another one is when you drop something or it falls to the floor and for a second there you find yourself wondering how much you actually need it or how urgently I did that with a pen earlier that rolled off the desk, decided it's not needed right now and it's still sitting looking up at me from the carpet now... and let's face it the trip down and back up isn't worth it until at least three things are down there

That's where kids come in handy

Originally Posted by gregarious_introvert

^ I don't think my year of birth has ever been visible in a drop-down menu, I was already too old for that when the internet became available.

Yea mine is a long way down too.

[girlinterrupted]

Originally Posted by Azalea

That's where kids come in handy

I bet

My birth year used to be in the drop down when I first started using t'internet, I seem to be scrolling more and more . Better than the alternative though!

[gregarious_introvert]

... the person offering you their seat on the bus / metro / whatever becomes really insistent when you politely refuse (this is happening to me more lately - it probably doesn't help that I haven't shaved my head or face since I left, so now have three weeks' growth of white hair and beard).

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[girlinterrupted]

^ Oh dear, a long time ago now when my parents were younger than you are now, my mum already had pure white hair and my Dad would tease her by warning her not to loiter outside shops in case someone hustled her across the road whether she wanted to cross or not...to be fair I think this amused the two of us more than mum

[gregarious_introvert]

^ I'm not sure when I went grey (I had the odd white hair at 18 - although I was predominantly dark, there was blond and red in there too, if you looked hard enough). I was still dark when I shaved my head at 40, then I used to shave it twice a day - but I let it grow back in my early 50s (ie. shaving it once a week or once a fortnight) and it was salt'n'pepper - it still is salt'n'pepper, just with a lot of salt and only a pinch of pepper!

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[choirgirl]

When your life is like a Bruce Springsteen song.

[Lone Dog]

^ I listened to a few Springsteen vinyl LPs a few weeks ago, and so many of the songs are just so melancholic. All about small town life, and the girls who moved away or got married, or when you dad died or you left home.

As for when you get old, how about being more susceptible to small injuries, which accumulate. A couple of weeks ago I got something out of the fridge and when crouching down a bit I felt my hip go. Took a week or so to feel better. Today, a similar issue.

[girlinterrupted]

When you can remember those teeny squares of greaseproof-paper type toilet roll they had in schools and public toilets. Paired with of course rock-like bars of carbolic soap. What an exciting day it was when liquid soap dispensers appeared.

[humphrey]

^ I left school before there was such a thing as liquid soap. It was still the white bars, I think they were called 'buttermilk'. The first job I had after I left school was with local government and they still used the same soap, but the toilet paper had become pink paper, but was no better than the grease-proof one.

[Azalea]

When you remember having to run across the school yard for the toilets whatever the weather.

[limey123]

Originally Posted by girlinterrupted

When you can remember those teeny squares of greaseproof-paper type toilet roll they had in schools

Indeed!

[choirgirl]

^My granny had those in her actual house.

[Toxic]

I'm starting to make noises when I stand up

It's happening

[Orwell20]

^^

Very true. The midlife crisis is essentially the realisation that life is no longer ahead of you, that you’re not moving towards something better. Or, to put it another way, it means giving up hope. That’s one of the main reasons people have children. They might be old and finished, but at least they can now live through their kids.

I am amazed much I’ve changed. My whole way of experiencing the world is different. All the vividness and intensity has gone. You really begin dying in your mid-30s, and that continues every decade until, by 85, you are so numb and detached that you’re virtually dead anyway. A happy 10-year-old and and a lonely 80-year-old (or even 40-year-old) experience the world so differently, it’s almost like comparing two separate species.

Right now, there are 18-year-olds in their first year at university. They’ve left home for the first time, made a new group of friends, lost their virginity, and are excitedly looking to the future. Everything is raw and intense. For me, as a lonely, mildly depressed 40-something, the world barely seems real. I find it impossible to take anything, or anyone, seriously. Me and that 18-year-old are living in different universes.

I guess two things make a big difference. First, whether or not you have kids. If you do, you can live through them, sharing in their highs and lows. Second, whether you lived a happy and fulfilling youth - sleeping with lots of people, having fun, living abroad, having adventures, achieving your dreams, etc. If you did all those things, you feel a sense of peace and satisfaction (I’ve been there and done that, now I can put my feet up and enjoy my memories). If you don’t have kids (I don’t) and your teens and twenties were nothing but shame, failure, humiliation and regret (which mine were), you’re ****ed. I’m sure someone will post the usual “it’s never too late” cliche. But in reality it IS too late. If I had died in my teens or twenties, people would have said “ah, that’s a shame, he had his whole life ahead of him.” Now, as an isolated, single, childless, mentally ill 40-something, they’d probably just think “well, maybe it’s for the best.”

[Dougella]

^ I don't think everyone feels that way, and I think your mindset has a lot to do with how your life is and how you feel as you get older.

I was miserable when I was 18, I knew nothing, I was scared and I had no idea how anything would ever get any better. Now at 35 (edit, I forgot I'm now 36. A sign of getting older is you don't know how old you are anymore lol) I feel happier than I ever did when I was younger! I know myself better, I have people in my life that I didn't know then and are a very positive influence.

[Indigo_]

^ Same. It is very dependent on mindset. I am almost mid 30s and I feel like I'm just getting started, certainly not dying. I'm much happier now than I was in my teens and 20s, enormously so.

I would also say to define a happy and fulfilling youth as one where you sleep with lots of people, live abroad and achieve your dreams is completely subjective and personal opinion. I would wager hardly anyone achieves their dreams when young.

[Moksha]

Originally Posted by Orwell20

^^



I am amazed much I’ve changed. My whole way of experiencing the world is different. All the vividness and intensity has gone. You really begin dying in your mid-30s, and that continues every decade until, by 85, you are so numb and detached that you’re virtually dead anyway. A happy 10-year-old and and a lonely 80-year-old (or even 40-year-old) experience the world so differently, it’s almost like comparing two separate species.

Right now, there are 18-year-olds in their first year at university. They’ve left home for the first time, made a new group of friends, lost their virginity, and are excitedly looking to the future. Everything is raw and intense. For me, as a lonely, mildly depressed 40-something, the world barely seems real. I find it impossible to take anything, or anyone, seriously. Me and that 18-year-old are living in different universes.

I’m amazed by people who say “I can’t believe my age - I don’t feel any different to how I did at 18.” Christ, I feel SO different that when I look back to my teens it’s like looking at another person. So much changes. For a start, time speeds up. When you are young, you feel like you’ve got forever. I think a poet described it as “the eternity of childhood”. Up until about 24 or 25, I felt so intensely alive. I wasn’t happy. In fact, I was suicidally depressed. But at least I felt alive. And I had hope. Death and ageing didn’t seem real, and everything I did seemed to matter. Louis C K does a good routine on this, on how people look at you differently once you hit your 40s, how no one cares what you do, no one is interested in your achievements, etc. I sort of feel like it doesn’t matter what I do any more. Life seems kind of surreal and absurd, like it’s a bizarre, meaningless, unfunny joke.

Another horrible thing about ageing is that you build up so much shame and regret, and then you carry it around like a two tonne weight. The shame is the worst. Everyone has their ‘story’ and we each repeat our ‘story’ when we go on a date or meet a new friend or work colleague, or whatever. But when ‘my story’ fills you with shame, you increasingly hide away (at least that has been my experience).

I often wonder what will happen if people like Aubrey de Grey develop regenerative medicine that can reverse the ageing of the body. If you could reverse a lonely, depressed 55-year-old’s body to that of a 20-year-old, would his subjective experience change as well? Would he recover that sense of limitless time and hope and intensity?

[gregarious_introvert]

NLH, Orwell20 & Moksha, I understand how valid your perspectives are to you and have some comprehension of how you have all (differently) arrived at them, but I believe that what you are experiencing is not to do with ageing, but with the various issues which are personal to the three of you. I am a little older than all of you (I feel as if I mention my age so much on here that I'm like the little old lady at the bus stop telling everyone that she's 75 - I'm not 75, by the way!) and my experience is totally different.

I don't have children to live through, I didn't have a successful career and I didn't spend my youth having adventures or living abroad - I did have some a couple of relationships in my 20s (so had some sex, admittedly) but spent most of it isolated; somehow, I did get through university and graduate, but not without a breakdown and suicide attempts. I did manage one holiday, in 1986 (I was 24) when I backpacked the Iberian peninsular with my partner of the time.

Things did, in a way, improve in the latter part of my 30s but that came to an abrupt halt just before I was 40, when I had to become my father's carer, something which continued for the next decade, after which I had my longest agoraphobic episode (from the ages of 50 to 53), so my life really only got started a little over five years ago. In that time, I have built a social life, made true friends for the first time in my life, become able to talk to strangers without having a panic attack and travelled the world (well, some of it - six continents and 50+ countries).

It's true that time passes more quickly as one gets older (it's inevitable, each year is a smaller fraction of one's life, so relatively shorter) and I admit that I have been lucky in that, despite having a brain which stopped me living for so many years, I have always enjoyed excellent physical health (if you ignore the hernia I've had for the last nine years and the digestive issues which started when I was in my 40s) so I am able to remain active in later life (again, not that much later - I'm not 60 for another year). For me, age has been, if anything, a catalyst - the realisation that time was running out for me to do things, that it was "now or never"; of course, the autistic side of me has got obsessive about that, which is probably why I can't stop travelling (now that I've finally started).

I think that feeling that one has limitless time can be counter-productive, in that "there is always tomorrow"; for me, it was counter-productive in another way, too, in that my younger life felt so horrible that all I could see was an endless future of (emotional) pain and suffering, which is why I spent so many years just wanting to die. It's only now, when I feel that time is limited, that I have acquired the sense of urgency to live and spend my time hoping that my life - and more importantly, my health - last long enough for me to do the majority of the things I want to do (and that depression doesn't return to stop me - these last five years have been the longest depression-free period of my life).

As I said, I am aware that you face issues with which I have never had to deal: I have no idea how I would cope with things like anhedonia or toxic shame - for me, the depression and agoraphobia (and the autism, which wasn't an issue in itself but created issues) were enough, so I can't really tell any of you how to overcome the hurdles you face, but I can tell you that ageing alone is not the issue.