Plus ça Change
Thursday, October 10th, 2002 10:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tamaranthI was going to title this entry 'On Growing Old', but by the time I'd thought it through it turned out to be something more like
On Having Been Alive for Longer
I'm the sort of person to whom birthdays, New Year, solstices etc are significant mileposts - hence a desire to celebrate each birthday (and thanks to those of you who helped!) Every year, just after my birthday, I tend to think about Life Etc.
Hence this post.
There are times when I feel that I'm growing old, and I instinctively hate that. I've been thinking about what I hate, and why.
What I am isn't what I was. I do regret not being what I was: but I don't regret being what I am. no one said I had to make sense, did they?
I was sad from time to time over my birthday weekend - and, whether those sad-spells were additive-induced or not, they all seemed to be sparked by attempts to regress to an earlier age. I can't be the giggly flirt I was at university, though, and it would look stupid if I was: ditto the Committed Partner, or the Pseudo-Sophisticate, or ... well, stop laughing and I'll continue.
To put it another way: a birthday snog* used to be the height of my ambitions. (This was the 1980s). I feel more loved and cared for now than ever before: it's as though my friends are a drift of leaves, accumulated over the years, that I can bury myself in à la Babes in the Wood. The significant phrase here is 'over the years' - I have friends I've known for twenty years, friends I've known for a couple of months, and they are equally likely to give me that soppy glow, with or without chemical encouragement.
There are aspects to ageing that scare me: the fear that there are already things I've done for the last time, the fear of physical and mental decline, the knowledge that death is going to become a larger part of my life as friends and family expire. And there's this nostalgia-trip for the Way We Were.
But, on a good day, I'm not afraid of change. Not afraid to change.
*I can think of three or four reasons straight off why I might not have got one this year. This isn't a complaint!
On Having Been Alive for Longer
I'm the sort of person to whom birthdays, New Year, solstices etc are significant mileposts - hence a desire to celebrate each birthday (and thanks to those of you who helped!) Every year, just after my birthday, I tend to think about Life Etc.
Hence this post.
There are times when I feel that I'm growing old, and I instinctively hate that. I've been thinking about what I hate, and why.
What I am isn't what I was. I do regret not being what I was: but I don't regret being what I am. no one said I had to make sense, did they?
I was sad from time to time over my birthday weekend - and, whether those sad-spells were additive-induced or not, they all seemed to be sparked by attempts to regress to an earlier age. I can't be the giggly flirt I was at university, though, and it would look stupid if I was: ditto the Committed Partner, or the Pseudo-Sophisticate, or ... well, stop laughing and I'll continue.
To put it another way: a birthday snog* used to be the height of my ambitions. (This was the 1980s). I feel more loved and cared for now than ever before: it's as though my friends are a drift of leaves, accumulated over the years, that I can bury myself in à la Babes in the Wood. The significant phrase here is 'over the years' - I have friends I've known for twenty years, friends I've known for a couple of months, and they are equally likely to give me that soppy glow, with or without chemical encouragement.
There are aspects to ageing that scare me: the fear that there are already things I've done for the last time, the fear of physical and mental decline, the knowledge that death is going to become a larger part of my life as friends and family expire. And there's this nostalgia-trip for the Way We Were.
But, on a good day, I'm not afraid of change. Not afraid to change.
*I can think of three or four reasons straight off why I might not have got one this year. This isn't a complaint!
