Getting Old Sucks!

There are oh so many ways in which getting older is a downer.

Let's start with the obvious. Our looks start to change as we get older and for many of us that is not a good thing! You wake up one morning in your mid-thirties and look in your fluorescent magnifying make up mirror to see a wrinkle that seems to have appeared overnight. Where in the heck did THAT come from? Was that there yesterday? Did I just not notice? Then you dig up some recent and older photos of yourself to figure out when that happened. Somewhere between your 30th birthday and now, that stupid wrinkle made itself known and you just didn't take notice .You obsess about the wrinkle, you buy creams, lotions, masques, concealer. All to rid your face of that sign of aging. You scan your friends' faces to see if they have any wrinkles. They do, but either they don't know about it or they don't care. You are NOT going to be the one to tell them they have a wrinkle. That goes against all girlfriend codes in every culture!

This obsession continues until the next wrinkle, freckle or broken capillary appears. YIKES! All of a sudden, in your 40's it seems like this affliction has spread and is running amok all over your face and, gulp, other areas of your body. How will you fight the toll aging is taking on your looks?
I guess it all comes down to this. If you eat right, exercise, get enough sleep, stay away from smoking, drinking, and other looks busters, you are pretty much doing all you can to preserve what looks are left !! Genes play a role, but that isn't anything we can control.

Once you get into your late 40's you can start to notice the difference between the people who take care of themselves and those who really don't. This is where the signs of aging on your looks begin to diverge. We all have wrinkles and age spots; things are positioned lower on us than they used to be due to 40+ years of gravity working against us. As we enter 50's and 60's unfortunately, many people will begin to experience health related issues that will also take their own toll on appearance. I guess we need to conclude that at a certain point, good health is more important than trying to fight the appearance related ills of aging, and you can only do as much as you can do! We need to remember that even though we would love to look 20 again, it ain't going to happen without significant new scientific discoveries :-)

Let's move inside our face to our brain. That is the next thing to go, or so it would seem. Sometime in my late 30's when I was busy raising my sons, taking care of the home, managing my child's diabetes, my memory seems to have taken a leave of absence. It used to be so reliable. I never needed any electronic gadget to remember a phone number, an appointment, a birthday, a forgotten grocery list. I always remembered where I parked, what books I have read, what movies I have seen, where I left my keys. That is all now kaput! I rely on my phone to tell me someones phone number. Most of the time I don't bother to try to learn them. I park in the same aisle at the stores I frequent so I will never be one of those people wandering around aimlessly looking for my minivan in a sea of minivans! I rely on my paper calendar to tell me when I have appointments, and I also write them on a whiteboard on my fridge. Birthdays...those are sketchy. For close family and friends, I still manage to remember most of their special days. I really think what has happened is that at some point in my 30's my brain (memory) reached critical mass and now there is a kind of memory triage system in place. The really important stuff gets remembered. All the fluff--where did I park, have I seen this movie before---gets pushed out and I have to scramble for it! This is not Alzheimer's. Everyone I talk to that is my age is in this boat with me!! Hopefully while we are sailing in this boat, we will at least recognize each other!


Now let's talk about the real pain of getting older. That would be the PAIN. So many things that we have always done in our lives now cause us pain after we do them. I have always raked my yard, and tended to the shrubs and flowers. Yeah, I used to be tired after a day of doing that. Maybe I even had some aches in my arms after raking. That was years ago! Now, it is a given to wake up with a backache every day, no matter how many chiropractor visits I take and no matter how much exercise and stretching I do. Also, after a day of yard work, I am toast. I take a pre-emptive Tylenol or 2 and hope that I can get out of bed the next day. Hauling all of those laundry baskets up and down the stairs never used to seem like such a chore back in the good old days! I really like to paint; I paint rooms, I paint paintings. The room painting is what really kills me now. I am too short to use the 2nd step on the step ladder to paint along the ceiling. I am too tall to use the 3rd step. I am in the lousy position of either having to stand on my tiptoes or scrunch down. Neither is a good plan. My hands ache after a couple days of painting. And remember, I am a person who eats well, sleeps well, exercises! I feel sorry for those of you that don't. Tylenol probably doesn't cut it for you!

They eyes are another problem for some of us. I have had poor vision most of my life, so it has been an issue. Last year I got a new contact lens prescription that made it so much easier to see at night, and while driving. No more squinting to read road signs. This wonderful change in prescription had a MAJOR drawback. My far away vision improved, but close up vision became worse than ever. I am now stuck with those darned magnifying glasses. Try looking young with those at the end of your nose!

Hopefully once we accept that everyone goes through this process we can make peace our changing bodies. After all, there are positives to getting older. We are wiser than we ever were. We have a lot of life experiences that make us more interesting. We are less afraid to stand up for ourselves and we tend to stick to our convictions. Our priorities change and we can focus on what is really important. We realize that if we are healthy we are are better off than many of our contemporaries. And, lastly, we still look young to the REALLY old people!!

Think of these positives next time you are looking in that awful magnifying mirror. Or better still unplug that mirror and look at yourself in a more flattering light. You deserve it!