I am getting more emotional as I get older. Older…I hate that word. But more on that later. What I have noticed is that I am more emotional than I used to be. A movie, a song, or simply some irrelevant-seeming thing or activity makes me tear up, or get angry – or takes me back to my past so easily. Is this a sign of maturity, aging, stress, regret, or something else altogether? I find it interesting. I find it disturbing. And most of all it really irritates me. Much of the time I feel like I have the hard-alcohol blues. Is it depression?
I think depression may fit. And here is why. The ‘older’ word. I am devastated by the idea of hitting 40, and then 50 and 60 and so on. I feel like my youth just slipped away…and I am left with this tired old body that just doesn’t fit my soul. I don’t feel grown up inside – so why do I look so old outside? Is this normal to dread aging so much? Or am I broken? And when I say I dread it – I mean to say that it is paralyzing…all consuming…and I wish I could turn back time more than almost anything.
The odd thing about all of this is that I love my life – my husband, my kids, my job. I love everything about it. I am proud of all that I have accomplished and I don’t want to lose those memories or this life. But at the same time, I feel like time is flying by so quickly and I am not getting enough out of it. I feel like I aimlessly wondered my way through high school and college, and found myself a parent and wife and just sorta continued wondering until here I am – facing 40.
I am not even sure why I hate the aging so much – but oh man, I do. I look in the mirror at wrinkles and I cringe. Whenever I am out around other people I enviously look at the young girls with no veins visible in their legs, no stomach, no lines around their eyes. I see the college kids with their whole lives ahead of them and I miss it… I miss feeling like I have forever to figure out what I want to be when I grow up. I miss feeling young and naïve and silly. And I think that makes me sad. Am I crazy?