I'll tell you the worst thing. Far worse than anyone else here can mention.
Time is constantly accelerating. When you are 5, the concept of a year is nearly an eternity. But your perception of time changes the older you get. Every year is shorter and shorter. Like you are on a constantly accelerating ship headed to the end of existence.
The older you get the less time with friends and more time alone you have.
Realizing how stupid you were when you were young.
You start to realize there's only a finite amount of time left and start having to choose what you're going to start based on what you'll be able to finish and what you could have spent your finite time on instead of.
Also loved ones and close friends passing away is hard, but the state before that... getting ill and their health going downhill... no longer able to be the person you grew up with. It's mentally rough.
Finally, your body no longer being able to cash the check your mind wants to write.
The body is like a machine, and the older you get: parts suddenly break down and can’t be fixed anymore. Some parts got damaged when you were young (meniscus, teeth, hearing) and they then start causing problems when you’re old. It’s practically impossible to loose weight after 50. Your libido goes down the drain.
You aren’t getting any more teeth, so take care of the ones you have.
Stress produces cortisol. Cortisol reduces your empathy.
Like Casandra, knowing the future won’t make you happy or get people to listen to you.
Intelligence is setting your medication to automatically arrive when you run out. Wisdom is having it arrive a week before you run out.
I'm still pretty young yet but one thing I've noticed with growing older is how less and less people your age seem to want to have fun. I don't mean acting silly I mean finding time for joy in life and expressing that inner child. And yet they still make mistakes and deal with them like a kid would :/
It really feels like being with children acting like adults, who have forgotten how to be children. Just weird lol.
You're tired all the time. You realize there's degrees of tired and you figure out how to do things at different levels.
Three main things from my personal experience.
Sleep is shit. I remember when I was a teen or in my early 20s. I could sleep like a baby for 10 hours straight and wake up like tigger, raring to to, full of vim and vigour. Now I sleep in half hour bites. Each time I wake, I have to change position because some bit or other feels like it's going to sleep (the irony!) or just hurts. At least once in the night I need to pee. My dreams, at this point, inevitably become some variation of me looking for a toilet and they're always dirty or broken or something is wrong with them. I wake feeling tired, even if I get 10 hours in bed.
Chronic arthritis. I'm not that old (late 50s) but my hips are utterly fucked. I can't walk for more than a couple of miles before the pain starts. I can't have steroids because (apparently) my hips might just fall apart. I can't have hip replacement surgery (Fuck! That's something old people have done!) because the arthritis isn't currently sufficiently debilitating.
People no longer notice you. When I was younger I was a good looking guy. I had girlfriends who made everyone's head turn. Women fancied me, men were envious of me. Now, I'm just some old guy. It's pretty fucking rare that anyone gives me a second glance. I'm just some old guy.
It fucking hurts.
Seriously, every day there's a new ache or pain. Things that never hurt when I was younger now hurt if I think about them wrong.
Body on Monday: "So we're taking a step today, are we? Not without your ankle suddenly feeling like a knitting needle is being driven through it for the next week".
Body on Tuesday: "Sneezed, huh? Enjoy the feeling of your lower trapezius muscles being ripped from your back!"
Body on Wednesday: "Did you turn your head slightly to glance over that way? Boy, you don't like this neck, do you?!"
Body on Thursday: "Yeah, nothing fancy today. Just flaring up this old back injury, because you turned over in your sleep".
And so on ...
Your body ages faster than your brain. Your brain says “go ahead, jump!” Your body says, “aw fuck!”
The weight of experience.
The heartbreaks, failures, disappointments, and losses you experience in your youth accrue and do permanent damage over time. Also, everything you loved in your youth will be unrecognizably different or gone completely within 20-30 years. (Which is why I recommend people get in the habit of journaling.)
Also, you won't digest food as well as you age and your digestion's going to get weird.
The future seems distant but the past is an instant. Your life seems like it went by in a flash.
In your mid 30s all the pets you and your friends got as your first pets as “adults” die. That first dog for your first place? Dead. That first cat after college? Dead. They all die in the same ~5 years period so you relive your loss through your friends over and over, and dog save you if those happened to be the pets your children were born with… it’s so hard
RIP Evey, Momo, Bonnie, Otie, Maddoc, Buddy Lee, Twinkie, Blue and Pippen, among so many others, we still miss you 💔
It can feel like you're slowly fading out of existence. Almost like you're gradually becoming a ghost. No one cares that much about anything you have to say or anything you do because you're old. I'm lucky because I have a home that's mine and I'm surrounded by family and friends, but I'm starting to realise how hard it must be if you get old without those things. Like becoming invisible alone. Also, it's pretty obvious now that the end is coming at some point. When it does I hope it's quick. I hope I don't see it coming and that I don't end up being a burden on my loved ones.
You have to live with all the mistakes you've made your entire life.
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