Who Feels Old Before Their Time?

In My Humble Opinion
21

I’m 27. I feel like I’m 57. I’ve had enough shit compounded on my in the 5 years since I left the Air Force to wear me down completely. In those 5 years:
I was in a car accident that put me in a wheelchair and left me with the use of only my right arm (I healed though, all better now)
I got engaged.
The engagement broke up.
I lost my job.
I lost my apartment.
I lost another job.
Lost another job.
I finished college.
I quit drinking and drugs (hmm, coincidence with the lost jobs thing?).
I got engaged again.
I got un-engaged again.

Now I generally feel beat, but on the upside, I don’t think things can get as bad as they were again.

22

In the angst years I wrote this one poem… “I grew up years ago. Nobody noticed.”

Contributors:
Being smart.
Being handicapped.
Being a teacher’s kid.
Coming out at an extremely early age.
Lots of death.
Extensive work with suicidal people.

Stuff like that. I’d like to think that if I’d never posted my age here, I’d be percieved as a bit older. Physically, I look my age range, but I apparently talk like someone twice my age.

23

I am also 32. Although I’ve never had a “mid-life crisis,” premature or otherwise, I have always felt older than my chronological age.

I didn’t really go through the young teenage rebellion stage. I was studious, religious, into sports, and pretty square. I didn’t drink until college, and didn’t “party” until grad school. For me, it was a sense of responsibility, which usually is not associated with youth. Heck, I even joined the Army and told my Dad I wanted to pay for my own college (although he could well afford it).

Plus the fact that I am very conservative, politically, makes me seem older than many others of my age group. Things are starting to even out, however, as people my age start to settle down with houses and families and stuff.

24

I’m split on this one. (47, btw, and don’t look a day over 47.) Finally figured out why: it’s perfectly possible to feel old w/o feeling in the least mature.

Another shy, bookish geek; strict, older-than-usual parents, the works. The most scathing reprimand when I was little was, “you’re acting like a child!” Took me until about 30 to figure out, hell, no kidding, I was a child. But the imprinting was there, y’know?

Somehow or other the glint-eyed hellion got imprinted too, though. Still feel like I’m “passing” as adult and dread being unmasked in heavy-duty situations. Knowing what needs to be done and knowing how to do it are just a veneer over inner, lunatic laughter sometimes. “You’re asking ME?!” larded w/ pungent, unsayable Rimmer quotes, choice riffs from this place, etc. Mature? Nooooo, not really.

Old? Comes and goes, but getting better. Just wading my way out of a horrendous, years-long quagmire. Felt older and colder than rock, all the result of living a life that was pure hell, not knowing how–or not having the guts–to get out of it and lying to myself there wasn’t any way to make it better. Doubt I’ll bounce back to the way I was but hold out great hopes for my 50’s and 60’s and beyond. Working up to being a total, joyous pissant. Not there yet, but there are promising signs…

What’s anybody gonna do to me that’s worse than what I’ve already survived? So there’s depressed-old and liberated-old. (There’s also rambling-senility-old but the first one tacky enough to mention it will suffer hideously subtle, lasting, excruciating, Vebbian revenge.)

In all seriousness, just hang in there. Take a long look at what’s making you miserable–then change it. Heck, even if your “dare” is wrong, can it suck worse than what you’re already feeling? Took me too many damned miserable years to learn the wisdom that I didn’t have be miserable in the first place.

All good wishes, btw,
Veb

25

I’m only 58, but DAMN, sometimes I feel at least 59!

26

Five, last year my birthday was after DragonCon (the con was at the end of June, early July, and the b-day is in August). This year it comes after, so if I go it’ll be my last pre-30s DragonCon!

The affect numbers have on people is strange… I and a couple of my friends remember having people tell us at 20 that we’d never be teenagers again. Man, good way to depress us! I remember getting really moody when I turned 25, and I don’t quite know why. And my dad jokingly told me when I turned 10 that I’d never be a single digit again–ok, at 10 it made me feel grown up, not old, but I think it’s the idea of “You’ll never…” as opposed to “Now you’ll be/Now you can/Now you are…” that gets upsetting.

27

I’m 33. Haven’t really had any real problems with being that age, or any age for that matter.

I have been starting to get that “gee, maybe I better think about having kids soon before I get too old” but I think that’s more of the biological clock finally kicking in.

I went into the military right out of high school and that was really a life changing experience (a good one) and it’s only now that I look back and say “Good lawd, I was so young…and stupid”.

I definately think the key to staying young or at least having a young attitude is a continued fascination with life and learning. I took piano lessons for a year when I turned 31. Enjoyed it. Hope I never have enough respect for people’s opinions that it would keep me from doing/learning something, regardless of my age.

28

Well, I certainly do feel those little aches and pains of growing old, and it doesn’t seem like I . . . oh, wait a minute, this isn’t before my time!

Rats!

29

Rosebud

Nope, that was last year. Dragoncon 2001 is August 31-September 3, so even if your birthday is the 31st, you’ll be 30. You’ll never again attend a Dragoncon in your 20s.

30

I am sixty. My hair is completely gray and thinning, my upper back hurts constantly, my ears never stop ringing, I am almost completely deaf in the left ear, I cannot see without my glasses, I need new teeth and I get skin cancer just from going outside to pick up the newspaper. Monday I am returning to the oral surgeon to check out a spot on my tongue that looks like the cancer that was cut off a year or so ago. Some days my hands hurt, some days they don’t. It is difficult to bend and even more difficult to straighten up again. When I talk to young people, I find myself saying “When I was your age,------” I am beginning to be afraid of teenagers and I cannot understand the point of rap music.

My signature says it all.

31

My dear Five, I’d threaten to beat you to death with my stack of bingo cards but I just don’t have the energy these days. When’s Matlock on? I want some tea.

…sigh… I really could go for some tea…

32

I’m 32.

But… I felt older when I was under more stress. Now that everything is managable and I’m married with two kids, I feel younger.

Now, when I get in shape, I’ll feel better :slight_smile:

33

I’m 34 and have always identifed more with the depressionary age generation than my own. My parent(s) are as old as some of my friends ( and husbands) grandparents.

I am the tail end of a baby boomer family, so I am technically a boomer, but not really. I am too old to be a GenX’r and frankly, I would never want to be labeled that. I want a label, dammit, and it looks like the only one I am going to get is Soccer Mom. Crap.

People my own age (regardless of how old I am) have always annoyed me because, frankly, they are idiots.
When I was young, I owed it to them being young and untested. Now that they are in their 30’s, my previous synopsis is pretty much dead on: morons who just lemming through life learning the hard way after the fact that fire is hot when you touch it.
I think it also is safe to say that when you lose a parent when you are nine and not long later all your older siblings are diagnosed with a terrible slow killing disease, you lose your innocence and rose colored glasses in once felled swoop.

Although, at the luncheon after my brother’s funereal last week, two women ( my mom’s cousins) whom I’ve heard alot about in my life but only just met that day, both said to me, " Have you always been so optimistic?" My response to that was, " Got you fooled, don’t I?"

I have never once in my life considered myself an optimist, unless it is dealing with schadenfreude, then I am as perky as a cheerleader. ( Feel free to quote me on that. :smiley: )

34

I hate to put a damper on this pity party, but I just turned 45 years old and I feel like a randy teenager!

35

I’ll be turning 76 this year, but until I reached 70 I didn’t feel “old”. Now I have high BP, diabetes, aneurysms repaired, bladder cancer (in remission) rotator cuff surgery, an eye operation, and next month a cardiac catheterization. I really feel old now! I’m certainly glad I didn’t have any particular problems growing up–I enjoyed the first 70 years! Count your blessings.

36

It’s funny, I have more of a tendency to think “How on earth did I get to be THAT old?” I turn 40 next week, which I don’t really think of as old, but in spite of having a marriage, two kids, and a job, I still wonder sometimes “When did I grow up? How did that happen?”

Not that I’m immature. Even as a teenager, I had several people tell me that I was more mature then than most adults would ever be ---- but I guess I always feel that I have so much more to learn, that I can’t really be grown up yet.

Speaking of my teen years — I remember a teacher admonishing a group of us playing around at lunch one day to quit acting like children. My immediate reaction to that was “You’re kidding. We are just having fun. We ARE still kids. We are legally entitled to still act like that, at least until we graduate.” I feel very fortunate that I was allowed to grow up at my own pace, and not be forced into adulthood.

I might even make it there eventually…Maybe at 50?

37

I’m with you. I’m 31. My dad’s 72 and my wife’s grandfather is only in his sixties. My grandfather was born in 1898 for Chrissake. How about we call ourselves “Young Fogeys”?

38

Right back at cha, Gent, my Grandma was born in 1890. My husbands grandma was born in 1922. My mom was born in 1926. My FIL was born in 1942. My brother 1949. This just blows my mind.
Young fogey’s…can I get a senior discount at Denny’s? :slight_smile:

39

Hmm, I’m starting to see a trend here, I think. Those of us who were disconnected from our “peers” in childhood seem to be feeling older than our age now that we’re “all grown up.” I know I spent my childhood (Air Force brat) continually losing all that I had known for new houses, new schools, etc. - nothing was dependable except my immediate family. Additionally, I was the youngest, so I pretty much only associated with my elders (much to my sisters’ annoyance, I’m sure). In sum, we never felt young because there was never anyone to teach us to feel young.
Anyway, I’m 34, and feeling pretty dead end as far as life goes. I keep telling myself that there’s always hope, as long as I can figure out what to change about myself to improve my life.
Oh, well; at least I’m not the poster child for anything.

40

I’m 36. My knees are are well into their 50’s and my lower back in one step away from the nursing home.

I still have my youthful enthusiasm though. Well, sometimes I do.