Decrepitude
◊ We live for just these 20 years; do we have to die for the 50 more we have? - David Bowie, "Young Americans"
Once I hit my 23rd birthday, I realized my life after that point would consist of very slowly dying.
Up until then my body worked so well I rarely paid attention to it. As long as I didn't suffer any obvious illness or injury, everything worked together smoothly in a pain-free, predictable manner and didn't call attention to itself.
But my 23rd birthday brought a million small maladies along with it. I get stabbing pains in my feet and legs for no reason I can see, or my wrists freeze up with carpal tunnel syndrome, or my back aches like hell when I wake up in the morning. I get persistent headaches and the bags under my eyes take longer to go away and staying up all night fucks with me for days.
And it's only going to get worse.
I can try to forestall the inevitable deterioration: exercise more, eat better, sleep enough, drink enough water, all the stuff everyone knows they should do and never will. But it feels like trying to keep a machine from killing itself with its own accumulated inefficiencies.
I'm resigned to it. I know I'm not meant to live forever. I traded these slow drags on my system for knowledge and skill and wisdom. Yeah, my neck makes a noise like popcorn when I turn my head first thing in the morning, but now I can do things I never dreamed I'd be able to do when I was 15, like buying alcohol and walking across flat carpet without tripping and parallel parking.
And I can be stealthy about aging. I still get mistaken for someone fresh out of high school, so it wouldn't be hard to start hanging out near high schools, befriending the little teens, then killing them and bathing in their blood to keep myself young.
It's nice to know they're good for something.