Hot Topic: Old Age

I have a strange penchant for analyzing old men and women on the streets, casinos, and restaurants. Their trembling hands bordering on Parkinson’s reaching for the saltshaker. They exchange words with each other through dentures and candy breath, and it intrigues me. Senior citizens who have reached the point of no return, whose future is only the past, those that need the help of a million angels to stand up, yes, those, they make me wonder.

Let's get to it: 

I wonder what they were like when they were younger. Did she hike up her skirt to flirt with the cute guy down the street? Did he climb a mountain alone because he liked the view? Did she cry during the proposal?

These people have lived a life I can only dream of—full of obstacles and stories that would rival Dan Brown’s. But they now reside in an empty house, with the remnants of their past reminding them of the life they could never change. It drives me crazy to think that in a few decades, if I’m lucky (or unlucky) enough, I will be one of them.

I don’t want to be.

I have already passed my childhood, where my creativity and dreams were at its peak, and the love I had for others was bigger than the moon. That stage of my life is gone, and now I’m on the cusp of adulthood—a place I want to steer clear of. Who would choose responsibilities over innocent indifference?

But since I’m not Benjamin Button and thus I am not exempt from *shudders* responsibilities, I want to try my best to live for something. May it be a dream or a person, I want to find myself constantly striving for something. I want to wake up and be excited for what I’m going to do. You can’t do that when you reach a certain age. All you can do is lie there and think about what you've done and what you could have done. What if you remember that time you passed the opportunity to find the cure for cancer and now you blame yourself for the millions of deaths each year?

When you’re in your 90’s and you have outlived your friends, spouse or kids, you’ll wake up everyday with regrets instead of dreams. Reminiscing about the past becomes a routine, like brushing your teeth (or gums). You'll probably forget what sex feels like, and if your partner passes away before you do, your wrinkly vagina will collect dust or your balls will shrink up like a raisin. Even if your spouse is still alive, using the two fragile genitals together sounds like a 911 call waiting to happen. 

Come to think of it, this whole aging thing is crazy. In a few decades time, your existence will merely be the result of a human flaw—morality. I mean, if you believe in the Bible, death only entered the world after the Fall of Man. Humans weren’t supposed to die.

I like being 19 and having the promise of a future. I like being noticed and regarded as someone worth looking at. It might seem conceited, but I don’t want to cross that line in life where other strangers consider me as just that—a stranger. 

It’s not the fear or aging and restricted mobility that scares me, but it’s the thought that my life is over. My 90-something year-old life will be able to be summarized through photographs, videos, and, god forbid, this blog. I don’t want my entire existence to be encapsulated and put away in a cardboard box up in the attic. But it frightens me to think that one day, all my fears about aging will happen, and I can’t do anything to stop it.