Getting old. How has it affected your sense of who you are?

I have a different take on this.

Im not the same person as i was a five years old.

Im not the same person as i was at fifteen years old.

Im definitely not the same person as i was at thirty years old.

Even today I am not the same person as i was yesterday.

Aches and pains come and go. I never take medications. Never use make up if i dont have to. Eat lots of fruit. Exercise irregularly and walk when I dont have too. Finally I try to get as much sleep as possible.

Er. . .

I forgot . .

follow

No particular age or gender.

That's closer to,what I feel.....and observing.


Yes, the luck in having dodged bullets so far

Knee on one side, sciatica on the other. Makes sleeping an interesting challenge.

Ya struggle to change position, thinking you will feel better . . .
And you don't feel better. . . Just different!

Hi, Neo, oh person of my age group - I'll be 75 the day before this halloween. With Roberta, I say (and have said before), who? me? It seems to be crossing a border re my sense of things, but I bet I'll get used to that too.

On who I am, re my perception of myself; that's changed, sometimes radically, but I'm still the same old me. More on that another day - the same old me is about to make salmon potato (etc) fishcakes and I won't make this post long right now. Since I'm remembering a couple of youse saying things about gender, I'll add that I like my gender, don't remember ever not liking it, always identifying with it. Long ago learned that people vary on these takes. I've had some interests that in the old days would have been taken as tom boyish, more on that later.

I've lived a much odder life since I moved to New Mexico, your basic big mistake-o, for me (others love it here). I'm not unhappy, as a generalization, but have stuff and nonsense and scaredyness going on, all for good reasons. To which I say, manana.
>
Edit to say I'm damned irritated that I haven't gotten back to NYC to see Robbie at least once more, and, for sure, meet some people I didn't that last time.

Wan, age I suppose
Forgive terrible pun

"Mute" seems to fit here

Alas alack, no offense Dio

I've been thinking about this. I think I'm mostly me but more so in some ways and less so in one biggie.

More so: I worry and kvetch about more things. I have little money and that contributes to both. As I mentioned before, I'm more inclined to say what I think than I used to be.

Less so: I'm not as smart as I used to be. I'm not talking about memory. I'm talking about intelligence. I talked with Bob (dys) about this. He said that I was the only person who knew what he meant. I think he was the only person who knew what I mean. Sigh. This lesser intelligence causes me major panic and fear. I'm not used to it. I'm not used to having to stop to figure things out and not always coming up with an answer. It makes me feel helpless.

Hey, osso, Get your ass back here.

I'd like to. As usual it is a matter of moolah to do it, says she with the incredibly old almost diseased iMac. I don't scoot around like I used to: that trip where a bunch of us met a couple of happy times was quite a high mark, as the surgeries eye crappo started happening the next year, six in all. That's probably why I wax on about my italy trips too, the last one, about a month long, with me especially getting along in space with vigor. Even though I avoided being out alone at night re my eyes, in the daytime I was Mizz 5 to 10 mile a day walker a fair number of those days.

But memories of being more able aren't the full reason for my enthusiasm - the full reason is that I had had such a good time. I still remember getting there on 3rd avenue, the waiter or M'd escorting me to a booth/room right on the street sidewalk. I met Diane on that trip too and we had lots of talkathons as we walked Manhattan. I still remember ordering a tripe soup at the French restaurant, no longer there, and the three of us talking away. I followed that, which I didn't hate but didn't entirely finish, with a blueberry pie or tart. I don't remember what you two ate..

What does wan mean? When you use it...I know what it normally means.

Ute was some weird autofuckup thing. I think I meant good.

Oh dear. Wish it was all easier for you.

You know Robert is using mindfulness these days to calm himself?

Sounds as though part of it was also having good sight???

Yes, definitely true. I've always been night blind with poor peripheral vision, and didn't know it for a long time, just figuring others were like me, while I was the one who tripped on tree roots or goofed up sitting down in dark restaurants. I was long used to being me. Those turned into stories, and turned to be not really stressful, just goofy tales. I finally took myself to the Jules Stein Institute, telling the resident that I thought I had RP, an idea I got from a description in a magazine, a kind of health ad if I remember. He said no, that's rare. Not long later, he agreed and then I had a room full of people in white coats looking at my eyeballs. That was when I was in my forties.

New York, bless it's beady heart, was easy to walk (daytime, but also somewhat at night because of the reasonable lighting - in 2003, quite a joy.

Things are downhill these days, not so much re vision (I still have one grand eye), as re balance - but I still enjoy a local daytime walk, except for the crappy paving. I'm starting to carry a stick. It's ironic, given that I used to design paving, back in the day. Don't get me started on the killer neighborhood mailbox, the cause for the stick... the place around is multiply unlevel. I used to specify mail box systems too. The devil is getting back at me. New Mexico is a bit different from California re, uh, construction oversight.

Well, enough of this, eh? There is plenty of good.

I watched myself coming to the end of feeling young. Watched very closely, wondering how I'd transition to this new thing. I felt myself stepping over the line of demarcation; I guess because I paired it with ending a relationship - those two things were looming for a year or so.

I knew the relationship would be my last of any consequence because I refuse to do it again. Since I've always been part of a couple, I knew life would be a new thing.

Just not sure exactly what it is, yet. I'm only sure that I don't like it currently, and the odds are I won't.

The adjustment is irritating, tedious. I don't know what to wear, how to do make-up, do my eyebrows match?? (I can't see ****...hahaha I mean consider a half-blind woman tryong to color in the thin spots in her eyebrows without the use of her glasses...because they cover her eyebrows.)

Catch-22. The whole thing's a catch 22.

What the godless **** to do with my hair? Grey, white, lavender, or this irritating brown that fades to orange in 3.5 seconds after dyeing? Should I throw away my shorter skirts? Are my knees verboten? Who says? Exactly how far will my gums recede?

Previously, life centered around my children, my romantic relationships. What is life for at this stage? I suppose this is the time to find a new passion. Uh huh. Beat the bushes for a passion.

Seems stupid.

During the first part of life, we're the main characters in our fabulous, rollicking epic stories. Right now, I'm a peripheral bit player in others' stories; I'm catching up on rest on the weekend, rather than burning energy having the blast I waited for all during the workweek.

The me that I've been wonders wtf I'm doing.

New York is, indeed, a fabulous place to walk in...partly because it is easy to find one's way and partly because there is constant interest to be found in what you are passing.....and the footpaths are broad.
Same with Paris and London..

That's a challenging transition for you. Or rather, a bunch of them. I'm wondering if you may not find you like it a whole lot more than you think, as you get farther into it....especially the identity component.

Eyebrows are ridiculous as you age! Especially here where we get so much sun! Apparently their weed like growth has something to do with how much sun you get. I recall a quite young bushman with eyebrows so protuberant that I actually once saw one jutting out from a door lintel when I could not see its owner and couldn't for the life of me work out what it was! It was a place full of unpleasant wildlife so I kept very still trying to figure it out.

I have growths of stubborn and wiry white hair by my ears, which have resisted all sense, until I began to go blonde until my grey looks ok. They pretty much refused to be dyed. I began referring to them as my koala ears.

Lash, that was so beautiful in its honesty. I was moved. You wonder wtf you are doing. You moved me, and others I'm sure.

The old dirt road that existed where the youth of my area walked and talked, sometimes together, sometimes alone, listening to music and wondering about each other under the bright sunshine, leaving invisible trails of thoughts and plans and desires that are now ghostly, and will remain so until the last of us die, to perhaps enter into another area, asking the questions: from where do we come and to where do we go, never realizing that we come from where we were, and we go to where we are, only to succumb to obsolescence in due time again. This is sadness.

In my head I am still in my 20's. Right up to the time I try to get off of the couch and both my bad knees give out on me and I think to myself, this shouldent be happening at the age of 20. And than my memory kicks in and I remember that I am 81. But my opinions and attitude are still those of a 20 to 30 year old.