Hurtling Toward 60

on aging less than gracefully

Sixty is approaching at a speed I can’t comprehend. I’ll be fifty-nine next month and the thought of spending only one more year in my fifties is making me feel like I’m in a fast moving car with faulty brakes and there’s a curve up ahead. I have no control over the car, the speed, my life. I’m just hurtling toward exit 60 and all I can do is close my eyes and hope for the best.

I’ve grappled with age before, at all the right checkpoints in my life. I mourned the end of my twenties when I was still under the impression that thirty was old. I got married to someone half my age on my fortieth birthday - a marriage that did not last very long - in some misguided effort to ward off old age. My fiftieth was spent with family and I tried to embrace that age, told everyone that getting older had its finer points, that I was good with it because I was aging gracefully. It was fifty-five that did me in, when I realized I was on the downhill slide to sixty, and I’ve been obsessing about my age every since.

Fifty-nine finds me in flux. Newly separated, alone for the first time in fifteen years, trying to find myself at this late life stage almost feels like a joke I’m playing on myself. Who develops a whole new personality this close to sixty? Who suddenly embarks on a journey of self discovery and fulfillment during their waning years?

Yet here I am, trying new things, going outside of my comfort zone, learning to be alone again, looking to embrace life and all it has to offer before I wither away from old age. It was definitely the separation that threw me into this whirlwind way of life; I was stagnant for a month or two after he left and then - with a little prodding from my daughter - I decided that being stagnant wasn’t for me. I could sit in my house and listen to sad music and wallow in my feelings or I could push forward and live my best life. I chose to live a fulfilled life mostly because I was acutely feeling the shadow of sixty following me around, hovering in corners, darkening everything I did. The only way to rid myself of those shadows was to convince myself they don’t exist.

The thing about aging is you don’t go through it alone. Everyone around you is aging at the same rapid rate. So my entrance into old age comes with the dawning realization that if I’m old, my parents must be ancient. And that terrifies me. They are both in their eighties and although they live life like they’re younger than me sometimes - especially my father - I know that my time with them is getting shorter. Facing my own mortality means facing theirs.

My parents have dealt with aging in a way I hope to embrace. They don’t think about being old. They don’t talk about it. They certainly - unlike me - don’t sit on their couch and ponder death. They go out all the time. They do things. My father works, both out of the house and around the yard. Neither of them have been stifled by turning eighty so why I am here at almost sixty feeling the weight of age on me, letting those shadows ruin my good time?

As much as I am getting out there and buying tickets to concerts and making plans with friends - something I never did in the before times - I still let my age hang over me. I think about being the oldest person at a concert. I think about being too old to start over again in the romance department and how that part of my life is all but over. Sure, I see other people my age flourishing after setbacks, and it just makes me wonder what I’m made of. Do I have it in me to flourish? Will I let the last year of my fifties be one where I’m morose and anxious or will I take the lead I offered myself after my husband left and move forward?

Age is just a number, they say. But my gray hair and aching knees tell me different. Fifty-nine just feels different, feels one step away from researching local cemeteries so I can buy a plot for myself. If I age as well as my parents, I have a good twenty plus years left on this earth. I didn’t plan on spending them untethered to anyone. I honestly thought we were going to grow old together and that would take some of the sting out of aging. I wonder if my heart is done giving that kind of love to someone, if I’m done being the recipient of romantic love. Thoughts like that are what run through my head at 3am and make me feel closer to the finish line that I ought to be feeling.

I don’t know how to reconcile my sudden need to embrace all life has to offer with my 3am thoughts about death and loss and old age. I don’t want to be sixty. I don’t want to be fifty-nine. I just want to stay here and not age and have my parents not age because it’s all so terrifying. That’s not even taking into consideration all the “what have I done with my life” discussions that I have with myself. It’s not too early to start thinking about my legacy, about the reputation I will leave behind. I think about what I have to show for my fifty-nine years and it fills me with dread. Is sixty too late to get moving on that?

I know all the tropes; I know about all the famous people who got their start late in life, people who published books and made discoveries or just found love and got married in their later years. I know there’s still a lot of life in me yet. Stagnation is not an option. Neither is running head on into sixy with fear and anxiety.

That car I’m in, the one that’s hurtling toward exit 60, well the engine is starting to shake and shudder and the wheels don’t feel right and I think I need to jump out.