Getting Older Sucks

There's a certain comfort in familiarity... in the gentle lull of routine. It sedates us. Makes us drift along contentedly in the day to day dramas of fixing lunch, buying groceries, and changing little clothes after a morning in the sandbox. So it's always a shock when you get jarred into reality for a moment or two.

One day you're 19 and invinsible... the next you're 30 and barely able to move in the mornings. The face in the mirror becomes unfamiliar, but you accept it as your own anyway because it's all you have. And so much of what you felt passionate about 10 years ago suddenly seems so silly, irrelevent, and worst of all... unattainable.

I suppose they'd call it "growing up"... but it feels far more like "shrinking in". It's as if the world gets smaller and smaller the older we get. Less people, fewer places. Our lives become confined by schedule and obligation... most of our "free" time spent wandering between the rooms in our homes... picking up this, vacuuming that, helping a child get dressed, preparing meals.

We move far away from friends, settle into domesticality.. and our world shrinks even more until we're just tiny satellites orbiting that shining star we call "Family".

And Family is beautiful. It's warm and draws us near.. keeps us locked on with it's emotional pull.. with the way a child's smile can burst forth like a solar flare and melt your heart.
There's no better place to drift than in the orbit of the people you love... that much is clear.

But unfortunately that satellite gets smaller the older you get.. shrinks as less and less of it is needed. Early on you dump out all the parts of you that don't fit.. make room for what you need to be. Sure you try to hold on to a few souvigniers of who you were before you took your place attending to Family.... but over the years they get scattered and misplaced.

And eventually you just get smaller and smaller and more and more insignificant... until one day there's simply nothing left of you at all. You leave to orbit into a completely new eternity, and while you stay relatively smaller.....your "family" has suddenly become enormously larger.

How's that for a little pre-menstrual melodrama? LOL. Can you tell I am having a hard time with being 30 this year? Ugh.. when did the years start flying past so fast??