Old Father Time

Getting older is shite ain't it

Getting older is weird. When I was younger I was always convinced I would remain untouched by the hand of ageing. I was in top set science so I did know a thing or two about the human body, (until I was moved down two sets because I’d spent too much time trying to make threading a Paseta on to your shoelaces a fashion trend) for any gen Z that read this, that was the Spanish currency before the Euro, and it had a hole in it that you could thread on to your shoelace).

People used to gasp when I said I was 39 and inside I would feel warm and smug. I thought the story I’d told myself about never aging was true. I wasn’t even using a shit tonne of cosmetics, just a bit of moisturiser and SPF. Now though, as I hurtle around the sun on this shit hole of a planet, about to head into my 41st year, I have been pondering, worrying, ruminating. Every time I look in the mirror I see Ozzy Osboure or Professor Snape (knew I shouldn’t have cut my hair). And, don’t get me wrong, with a lick of paint, I still look alright. But catch me going to the shop, no bra, rosacea kicking off, grey hair moving in a completely different way to every other strand on my head (seriously, what the fuck is it made out of? chalk?) I think to myself, ooooh, she’s catching up with ya, old age. And simultaneously, I hope I don’t see someone from my past, or present.

I feel like I’m in a peculiar position of being chronically ill which has led my body to decline in a way I wasn’t ever expecting. Before I got ill, I lifted weights and did a lot of yoga and now I see three different physios because in their words my body has “deconditioned itself” from being too poorly to be able to exercise. It doesn’t help that when I do try to do any exercise, it gives me awful migraine attacks. That’s coupled with the fact that the plethora of drugs the NHS has chucked down my throat has caused my metabolism to go haywire (in that it doesn’t seem to work anymore) and I continue to gain weight and no one seems to be able to help.

One of the expensive medications (Botox) which helps approx 70% of people, failed to improve my condition and, in fact, made it 10 times worse. So I realised at that moment my forehead would never be that smooth again, and god was it smooth. Once the botox had worn off and the next medication they put me on made my weight spiral, (two stone in two months), I panicked, came off of the medication and, sadly, my weight has continued to climb. My forehead started to move when I laughed or I was angry at Sam for leaving the freezer open, defrosting my beloved peas (i’m not made of money).

I wasn’t enjoying this. I headed to Tiktok, the place I go for news, dances, the biography of a serial killer and health advice. I bought a new moisturizer, some retinol and some cinnamon tablets because a man who kept shouting at the camera said it helps with metabolism. Six weeks later, I looked no different. In fact I looked worse. Somehow my eyes had hollowed out and I blamed the retinol, but I think actually it was just old father time.

I always remember my Mum’s mates talking in the kitchen about their weight gain and their aging, their acid reflux and anxiety and I remember thinking so vividly, no way I will not go down without a fight.

And yet, here i am drinking from a prescription only Gaviscon bottle in my pants, trying every diet and remedy I can to lose weight, smeared in fuck knows what, face glistening from the slime and then I see my self in the TV when it goes to a night time scene and the screen goes black and I whisper quietly “she used to be a beauty”. It’s like a modern Lady Haversham, except, instead of getting rid of all the mirror’s its any reflective surface, the TV, the microwave, the fucking tap on the bath.

In some weird way, it all happening at the same time means I can hopefully get on with processing all the new and haunting things that are happening to me.

I feel stuck between wanting to embrace getting older and wanting to pump my body full of toxins. I spent my youth deciding what route to go down for my “older” style and I had narrowed it down to mob wife or art critic. I feel i may not be heading down either of those chosen paths and more just into anything that doesn’t have buttons on the waist.

The thing about getting older that I hadn’t really reckoned with was that I assumed it was this thing that happened overnight and you looked in the mirror and you saw and old version of you, and your body didn’t work anymore.

But actually it’s very incremental, it’s the porosity of your hair, the lines on your neck, you’re no longer the person your mum asks to go upstairs and get her anything anymore. And in a way this has been more of a shock to me than the imagined future.

I read a thing (went on Tiktok) recently, which said you age noticeably at 2 ages, there’s 44 and 60. So now i lay in bed every night, waiting for 44, who the fuck is gonna wake up on my 44th bday exactly?

I got to bed a woman with collagen in her body and the next i’m what? A bit of fucking driftwood floating through the flat? Surely not.

Alas, I wait for this date just like every date that Nostradamus “predicted” something, with great fear.

But maybe by then I’ll be ready for it, able to let this age shit wash over me. I do wonder if 40 and your 40s is the age you start to worry about things more. The doctor is no longer saying “don’t worry, you’re too young” and no one asks about your aspirations anymore. It’s a funny age and one I’m weirdly looking forward to exploring. I can probably mine this shit for several future substacks.

I spent my entire life waiting to be older, putting an extra year on my age, well quite a few when I was younger, trying to enter the night clubs of Corby and now look at me. Sadly hoping someone will gasp when I reveal my real age. What a sad little life Jane.

When my mum is shovelling down a Pukka pie and chips at 6pm and then subsequently ends up awake all night with burning indigestion I now understand and will never mock again.