On aging
I’m feeling so incredibly old today. No, that’s not quite fair. What I feel is afraid, not old; I fear that I’m growing irrelevant, but suspicious that this may be another plot of The Man (no, not my husband…THE MAN, if you know what I mean).
Here are the reasons that I am currently giving for “feeling old:”
1) They keep talking about this vaunted “18-34” demographic with regards to the elections. I’m no longer in this demographic. The way they keep going on about it, it’s as if my opinions and the opinions of my generation no longer matter.
But that’s not the big one.
2) I am reading Twilight and its sequels. Yeah, I’m a little embarrassed about that. The writing is as horrible as everyone had warned me, but, as I’m listening to them on audiobook—Hello, new mother! How else did you think I’d be having time to read—the reader gives some nuance where there is naturally none (sometimes well, sometimes not so well). Enough justifying. My point here is that the author does a good job of reminding me what it was like to feel the emotions of a teenager. Well, not just any teenager, ME as a teenager.
And, here’s the thing, I no longer feel these emotions on a regular basis, nor do I find them anywhere nearly as important as I once did. I have new, strong emotions, especially towards my daughter, but the particularly teenage feelings of an overweening attachment to a peer, for example, are gone from my daily life, replaced by less intense, less keening—older? more mature?—emotions.
That said, as the exploits of these ridiculous characters progress, I am reminded of what it was like to feel overwhelmed by the magnitude of my wants, needs and the pressures of the present. Those emotions, or the memory of them, are still there in me.
And, as I allow myself to re-feel them in empathy with the characters, I cannot stop thinking about the differences in me between my teenage years and now.
I met my husband when we were both 18. I wasn’t a particularly wild teen/young adult, but there was angst and chaos and all the things that you too may have experienced. We settled down pretty quickly, though, marrying six years later. It was a good decision then, and it remains a good decision now.
When I tell my peers about this fact of my life—now that we’re all well into our thirties and forties—I often get responses that display a mix of condescension, admiration and wonder, especially from those who took a different path. This is the path that I fear “The Man” deems the “better” path. The Sex and the City path. The path that encourages people to wallow in the chaos that is teenage emotion for as long as possible. These emotions that seem to be all about forging a overwhelmingly intense connection to another, but yet thriving on the novelty that only comes at the beginning of a relationship. Above all, these emotions are about the NOW.
This is all fine and good, really. How can you really understand what it means for time to pass when you are 18 (as a rule)? Where is the appreciation for the complexity of history that comes with decades of proactive choices about one’s own life?
Because, as we age, I think many of us inevitably learn that the now is not everything. It cannot be everything. This is why I am considering the strong, overwhelming, painful emotions of the teenage years as “young.” Not because I don’t feel them now, but because they have given way to feelings that I am terming “older.”
So, this all sounds smug and good. But, being reminded of the NOWNOWNOW has been making me reflect on how focused I have become on the future. And, come to think of it, the past—both of these time frames seem somehow more important to me than the present. And, perhaps, I have swung too far in this direction.
And I can see why people start to do stupid things in mid-life. They want those feelings back, because they can feel them there, just unused. These emotions that remind you of a time when there was less to think about. They remind you of a time when you only had to worry about your libido and money. There is an emotional rush in the discarding of what you know in order to revel solely in the present moment. But, of course, in order to unleash these feelings, you have to do silly and reckless things. Like buying cars you can’t afford. Or engaging in relationships that will come to no good.
And so, the recognition dawns. I have indeed changed. I have gotten older. I cannot go back even as I relive what it was like for me. Such a realization could lead to apathy. If I am not careful, I can be swept aside—no, I can sweep MYSELF aside, and give in to this feeling of irrelevancy.
But. But. I will not do it.
In reality, I may have changed, but I have to believe that I am not doomed. Every day, I think, I actually make a decision to stay in my current life. I could give it all up. It is, in fact, possible. It would be completely irresponsible, but it would be possible.
Every day is a decision. Sometimes that decision is easier, sometimes it is harder. With a child, now, this is a weight that I feel very keenly. It is not necessarily pleasant—although it can be.
If I can possibly do so, I will not let this burden allow me to forget what I have gone through, that I have lived a little and learned a lot. It is not over for me, and the emotions of my youth are not a synonym for life. Nevertheless, I will also try to be ever more mindful of relying on an emotional autopilot for the time that remains, because that way, true irrelevancy might lie.
