Getting old sucks
Yeah, I know most of you punks are older than me, but the past ten years have not been kind.
I got hearing aids for the first time in 2013. I've always had hearing loss in most of my remembered time - the consequences of a series of ear infections as a kid. The person who adjusted them for me said usually they set them to turn on slowly over a period of two weeks for new users, but most new users are a bit older than me, and my brain would be able to handle it.
I was fine inside the building, but the moment I walked outside I was so overwhelmed by the sharpness of the noise I was hearing I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown for about thirty minutes. Everything had a sharp, metallic sound to it - but I got used to it, and now when I don't wear them, everything sounds dull and muted. It was a beautiful thing, and I loved wearing them.
Then my eyes started to go.
In my youth I could tell you the sex of a gnat at 200 paces. I tested in at 20/10 vision at one point. Everybody else in my family (including extended) needed glasses; I was the odd man out for decades. As a kid, I loved the idea of wearing glasses - it was associated with being brainy and smart, and that's what I wanted to be. I was jealous of the birthright denied by my genetic quirk.
That being said, I knew the reaper would come for my eyes eventually. And over the past ten years, I've been noticing them declining, to the point where I got glasses two years ago.
I fucking hate them. When I first put them on, everything went non-Euclidian until my brain could adapt, which took a few days of screaming headaches. Even once I got over that, wearing them caused headaches of one sort (the weight of the glasses on the bridge of my nose caused issues) or the other. (if I stopped wearing them, I'd get headaches from squinting at stuff) The end result, if I wear them, is something not quite approaching what I had five years ago. Oh, and let's not talk about how they completely fog up whenever I put on a mask these days...
Why not contacts? Well, I have a bit of a phobia of putting things in/near my eye. I've watched people put contacts in and take them out, and there's no fucking way I'll do that myself.
Of course, there's also the various aches and pains that come with aging, the increasing ease of self-injury (I've done a number on the muscles in my right shoulder multiple times over the past year doing things that I wouldn't even think twice about ten years ago) and the general realization that your body is really starting to wear down a bit, and that it only gets worse from here. I can't eat what I want any more; it immediately goes to aiding my horizontal growth. My joints pop and occasionally ache; I may have the very distant beginnings of arthritis. (One finger joint in particular my wife has diagnosed as actually being arthritic)
It's not just the physical, either. My last grandparent died at the age of 100 in November, on my birthday. I was a little sad about it, but contemplative, and it didn't hit me as hard as the death of my maternal grandfather in '07, who was a strong father figure to me in the absence of a good relationship with my biological father. (We have one, it's just not close for a bunch of reasons.)
Becoming a father changed me, too. I had hope for the future; maybe my life had been kind of a mess up to the point I met my wife, but I'd gotten my shit together and was doing OK to the point I thought it was a good idea to bring a child into this world. I hoped (and ironically her name means hope, although I didn't choose it myself) that her presence would help to improve this world only to have my eyes opened wide to just how hopeless this world is by the election of Donald Trump a year after she was born. This little five year old creature, who is so ebullient and full of joy, seems like an alien creature to me. I just want to grab her by the shoulders sometimes and yell, "Why are you smiling all the time? Can't you see how fucking shitty the whole world is?" while others, I just want to keep her from ever having to interact with the rest of it.
I don't feel like I have any special insight, nor does this slowly growing feeling of impending doom give me any notion of checking out early; even if I wanted to, I have obligations in this world now that I cannot voluntarily discharge. Just wanted to share and say, "if you're feeling old, you've got company."
I got hearing aids for the first time in 2013. I've always had hearing loss in most of my remembered time - the consequences of a series of ear infections as a kid. The person who adjusted them for me said usually they set them to turn on slowly over a period of two weeks for new users, but most new users are a bit older than me, and my brain would be able to handle it.
I was fine inside the building, but the moment I walked outside I was so overwhelmed by the sharpness of the noise I was hearing I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown for about thirty minutes. Everything had a sharp, metallic sound to it - but I got used to it, and now when I don't wear them, everything sounds dull and muted. It was a beautiful thing, and I loved wearing them.
Then my eyes started to go.
In my youth I could tell you the sex of a gnat at 200 paces. I tested in at 20/10 vision at one point. Everybody else in my family (including extended) needed glasses; I was the odd man out for decades. As a kid, I loved the idea of wearing glasses - it was associated with being brainy and smart, and that's what I wanted to be. I was jealous of the birthright denied by my genetic quirk.
That being said, I knew the reaper would come for my eyes eventually. And over the past ten years, I've been noticing them declining, to the point where I got glasses two years ago.
I fucking hate them. When I first put them on, everything went non-Euclidian until my brain could adapt, which took a few days of screaming headaches. Even once I got over that, wearing them caused headaches of one sort (the weight of the glasses on the bridge of my nose caused issues) or the other. (if I stopped wearing them, I'd get headaches from squinting at stuff) The end result, if I wear them, is something not quite approaching what I had five years ago. Oh, and let's not talk about how they completely fog up whenever I put on a mask these days...
Why not contacts? Well, I have a bit of a phobia of putting things in/near my eye. I've watched people put contacts in and take them out, and there's no fucking way I'll do that myself.
Of course, there's also the various aches and pains that come with aging, the increasing ease of self-injury (I've done a number on the muscles in my right shoulder multiple times over the past year doing things that I wouldn't even think twice about ten years ago) and the general realization that your body is really starting to wear down a bit, and that it only gets worse from here. I can't eat what I want any more; it immediately goes to aiding my horizontal growth. My joints pop and occasionally ache; I may have the very distant beginnings of arthritis. (One finger joint in particular my wife has diagnosed as actually being arthritic)
It's not just the physical, either. My last grandparent died at the age of 100 in November, on my birthday. I was a little sad about it, but contemplative, and it didn't hit me as hard as the death of my maternal grandfather in '07, who was a strong father figure to me in the absence of a good relationship with my biological father. (We have one, it's just not close for a bunch of reasons.)
Becoming a father changed me, too. I had hope for the future; maybe my life had been kind of a mess up to the point I met my wife, but I'd gotten my shit together and was doing OK to the point I thought it was a good idea to bring a child into this world. I hoped (and ironically her name means hope, although I didn't choose it myself) that her presence would help to improve this world only to have my eyes opened wide to just how hopeless this world is by the election of Donald Trump a year after she was born. This little five year old creature, who is so ebullient and full of joy, seems like an alien creature to me. I just want to grab her by the shoulders sometimes and yell, "Why are you smiling all the time? Can't you see how fucking shitty the whole world is?" while others, I just want to keep her from ever having to interact with the rest of it.
I don't feel like I have any special insight, nor does this slowly growing feeling of impending doom give me any notion of checking out early; even if I wanted to, I have obligations in this world now that I cannot voluntarily discharge. Just wanted to share and say, "if you're feeling old, you've got company."
