Feeling Old

I have been feeling old lately.

Not the old I always imagined for myself; Iris Apfel in too many colors and patterns, fabulous in oversized glasses walking the streets of New York in wide legged linen palazzo pants.

Tired old.

Burned out old. 

The idea of grown-up on a Nickelodeon cartoon in the 90s old.

When did that happen?

How did that happen?

Many days have felt like a fight to find some semblance of the sparkle I once had with such abundance that I didn’t notice it was there.

My blood feels heavy. Slow. My will to do much of anything is pretty short.

Some may call that depression. Maybe it is.

But to me it feels old.

I feel I’ve lost my youth.

And I’m way too young for that.

I see vibrant young things on instagram (and by young things I mean people basically my same age) out in fun dresses celebrating like the sparklers they are.

I used to see these images and feel joy (or maybe jealousy I wasn’t there) but now I feel a primordial FOMO -- FOMOs cave-dwelling ancestor racing back from an ancient past -- a profound sense of loss. Not that I merely missed out on something I could have had, but that I am so far removed that I can no longer know it.

A friend invited me to Vegas to celebrate his birthday. So many things told me not to go - the pandemic, the finances, the sheer nature of what (I imagined) was Vegas. Divine intervention (and the forceful advice of some good friends) got me there.

And there, I came back to life.

I felt young again. I felt free and wild and lovely.

The glow lasted a few weeks, and I savored it because it felt rare.

But this week I am back to feeling old.

What do you do, when the sparkle is gone?

I never imagined in a million years, I’d be in my early 30s feeling this way. I was certain, even from a young age when society fixated with youth told me otherwise, my life wouldn’t even really begin until my 30s. And yet here I am. Feeling sad and tired and worn-down in ways I never imagined for myself at 93, let alone 33.

I can’t help but worry about our world and the people in it. How my hopes for the future, once so vivid and strong, now seem attainable only if a miracle happened, if this entire country had a change of heart overnight and we instantly felt the effects across a spectrum of issues. I am sad for my generation who is blamed for so much as we sit sogging with debt, afraid to have kids if we want to, unable to buy houses if we want to, out of the social security we’ve paid into our whole lives by the time we need it, unable to see if we can break the oppressive hand we were dealt or not.

It makes me feel tired and old.

I see now that so much of my sparkle came from possibility.

The socio-political landscape of the last six years have had their toll on me, and now, possibility feels dim.

Vegas was an escape.

A place where the world didn’t need to exist, just lots of neon, too much of everything, feathered, death-defying acts floating above your head in circus tents while you sip absinthe from under a fringed mask.

There was possibility there, if only for the next hour. What next delight was around the corner?

There was wonder.

So I suppose the opposite of old -- the diminished, sad old, not the wise, mischievous, free old we all deserve -- but the opposite of tired old, is curiosity. Curiosity and hope at what comes next. Whether that be around the corner on the Vegas strip or the day that waits outside my door for me.

I guess I write this for myself, and you if you needed it too in the midst of some terribly devastating years, to zoom back in. If the hope for next year is too big, what is the hope for your next moment? And the moment after that?

What is your hope for today?

And if you can find that, then maybe we can look towards tomorrow together.

I want to imagine a radical, wonderful future. Don’t you?

Have you ever lost the thing in you that sparkles?

How did you find it, dim as it was, and bring it back to life?