to be petrified at how quickly life goes by?

OH NO! Don't mention the John Lewis ad.... I CANNOT handle it.

Ohhh, Pranma - blubbing to your post as well.

You know THAT John Lewis ad? Fucked me up for life from the first moment I saw it...

I am 67 but in my head I am 25.I look in the mirror and see the grey hair and fading eyes and wonder where the long dark hair and mini skirts went.I look at photos of my youth-so many people gone now -yet in my head my Mum is still telling me to stand up straight and auntie is saying I could lose a few pounds.In my head dh1 and I sing folk songs and drink cider in smoky upstairs rooms,dh2 is still funny ,healthy and alive,my dc are little and ready for snuggles.It's like that 60's Kodak ad,'turn around and you're growing ,turn around and you've grown,turn around and you're a young wife with a babe of your own.'
That's it really-life-we all get one and use it then it's finished and we make room for others.I cry for my mum still and one day dd will cry for me-but not,I hope,today or tomorrow :)

This is me. Once I had DD1 now aged 10, I became very very scared - so this means one day I will leave my babies - I will die. I'm 48, so surely I have had at least half of my life, common sense etc. I've been pretty much terrified about dying ever since and have recently been posting about similar things on the mental health thread as I too thought I must be completely abnormal. The real point is, life is very very short, its the blink of an eye. Once you know what 40 years or so feels like, you can see very clearly how "little" time you have left. Ormirian explains it beautifully.

Ormirian - oh god...am blubbing...a beautifully sad - or sadly beautiful post.

What makes me feel slightly panicky is the fact that at some point my children will carry on without me. They are the people I love most. The people who's life story interests me more than anyone else. And there's are the stories I won't read to the end (I hope!). It's a real heartache to me And yes I know it's natural and normal and inevitable.....

I never used to think about this at all until - I can pin it down exactly! - I gave up breastfeeding my youngest and last DC about six months ago. The next morning I was standing in the shower crying, milk pouring out that was going straight down the plughole (didn't want to stop BF but I couldn't get him to stop biting me) - and just thinking "well, that's it, isn't it? My youth is finished, it's an unstoppable slide towards middle age now ."

Course, it would have been mainly hormones doing the thinking for me at that point , but ever since then I've felt intermittently horrified at the passage of life - the only one we get. It absolutely stinks that I'm not 23 any more. My kids are still so little that I almost don't feel any right to feel like this just yet, but I am seriously bad at "living in the moment" - I frequently "talk" to my kids even though I'm not mentally present - am thinking ahead to a big long list of things I need to do - and I really need to start concentrating on the moment. Buddhist mindfulness and all that! Any tips gratefully accepted!

I hit 45 earlier this year, have been married 25 years in September, my ds turns 16 in October and does his GCSEs next summer. It doesn't seem three minutes since he was a tiny baby and now he pats me on the head and calls me little mum.

What's scary is that I haven't achieved what i thought I would in life and don't know if it is too late now to do so. I also don't feel old enough or grown up enough to be 45...

stoopidbint, not sure about that, have been living with my mil for 3 months and it feels like 20 years:)
George Bernard Shaw said youth is wasted on the young and he is right. and i remember my brother as a teenager wanting everyone over 30 shot!
now i have dh and the dc's its better as i used to worry i would be alone, like bridget jones.
not sure about the bittersweet memories comment, am i being a bit thick?

portofino, i love killers, kaiser cheifs etc, have been to festivals and try not to say ooh that's for the young. but remember being young (18ish) and seeing older folk out and rocking and feeling they should be elsewhere:)
think my mums generation were very 60's 70's and seemed to have clearly defined to them modes of behaviour and dress which was the norm then. my mum didn't wear jeans after 40, they are for young people, she said.

It is funny, this "old" business. When I was young "old" people were those who'd lived through WWII and the Depression, etc. Now the younger kids I know think of "old" people in terms of the Vietnam War and hippies!

And I find myself going on about "kids these days, no respect. When I was young..." I'm 29 FFS!

I sometimes wonder if this is part of the reason people have a lot of children. When you still have very young children at home, a part of you still feels young. My aunt has six (most were not planned, I think) ages 6-23. She says it stings now that her youngest is at school full time, to know that part of her life is done now.

It does seem to be going by fast now that I have DS...surely he was just a baby a second ago, and then I blinked and he's blowing out four candles on his birthday cake.

I'm not very afraid of death...I don't chase it certainly but it could happen tomorrow or in eighty years. Of course I'm one of those strange spiritual people who believes that we never cease to exist, anyway. :)

Very interesting thread!

When my Dc was 3 years old she'd cry herself to sleep with thoughts about my and her and everyone elses' deaths. (G&T)

I was the same as a child, and, funnily enough, so was my DH.
We concentrate on living every day, and have dried our tears. There is nothing else to do!

It's quite liberating actually, and having seen so many LO die in my family, I'm relieved every day that I am alive and can go and do stuff - like learn to surf - and have a wonderful time smelling the roses

Being alive is ace.

I'm so relieved to hear lots of you have these thoughts and I'm not a freak! I regularly have sessions of getting really upset about same things - my DH and other friends I've talked to think I'm really morbid but I can't help it. I'm very happy and know I'm lucky in life and I do appreciate my blessings but sometimes its the sweetest moments that upset me most- I find myself welling up thinking about how transient it all is. Better stop before I start myself off!

Each day is a smaler percentage of your life, which is why I think of life going faster. I will be 49 next month and DH will be 50 in a few weeks, our 20th wedding anniversary is on wednesday and we now have teenagers.
The benefit of it all is when I was younger time seem to go so slowly and things we looked forward to seemed such a long time away, now I know things I look forward to will be here before I know it.
DS is going into yr11 this year and I just don't know where the time has gone since he was starting secondary.

I always thought I had a slighty skewed view of it all, as my mum died when I was 4. She was 21. I have always felt a need to DO stuff. I am always planning something.

But I worry that I miss out on the here and now. Day to day life seems like such a struggle. I look forward to events and holidays and don't pay nowhere near enough attention to say, dd just being dd.

I'm 39 in a few days. The last few years have gone in the blink of an eye. I have panic attacks about dying - as others have said, I simply cannot deal with no longer existing, of not being with my loved ones. Every sudden headache and I'm thinking "this is it". Like that bit when the Titanic rears up before sliding away.

Once my DCs were born, time hit warp speed, like they were born only yesterday but also forever ago, and to be honest, sometimes I feel so scared of what the future holds. I know I am a mess, have been all my life. But this Fear is one of the worst. Because that spider won't eat me. But one day, I will cease to exist.

I'm so glad it's not just me that feels like this though.

When I was little I used to confide in my father about my horror of death and the complete terror the thought of it would inspire. He used to say 'everybody dies...Even the queen...you wouldn't want to be the only one that lived forever would you?' that always made me feel better. At least we are all in it together. Nobody escapes the passage of time.

wellam - I always thought that was why we had religion. Though I have to admit that heaven vs nothing for eternity - the thought of both completely scares me more than anything. I just can't get my head around eternity at all.

I struggle to imagine the DCs as elderly, with families of their own looking after them, after we have gone. Though the alternative is unthinkable

Yep I worry about this kind of stuff an unhealthy amount. 25 - 30 has passed in a blink of an eye and I fear now DS is here time will accelerate more. In fact since DS was born I worry about death constantly, why are we here, how are we here etc etc. I too wonder how people just go through life not contemplating the fact that one day we may simply cease to exist or even that we are on a random planet suspended in mid air. Ugh.

But re. OP, yes it is fecking scary. I freak out when I realise that the first Duran Duran LP is 30 years old. It used to be the Beatles that were "old". It has gone SO fast.

I still chat on FB to primary/secondary/Uni friends who I have not set eyes on in (at least) 20 years. It does not seem possible. Yet we are still friends. DH went to a P&O reunion where he met his old shipmates from 30 years ago and they all still recognised each other and had a fab old time.

The thing that scares me the most is that dh will retire in 10 years. This is impossible - I only left school 5 minutes ago. We have to make plans - and HE is the one in denial.

I know. It's my birthday shortly and dreading it. Early 30s but ten years ago I qualified in my profession and it has gone by in a flash. I also feel scared and intimidated at how the years fly past, and how I have hardly saved anything by way of nest egg.

What a way to live, constantly worrying!

oh yes I remember being told by my mum I'd be entitled to free eye tests at 40 becuase of glaucoma in the family. I filed it away in my 17yo brain as "free eye tests when I'm old". Well "old" is a few short years away

Stealth, I don't feel any "different" to how I did 20 years ago either. I maybe feel a bit wiser, but I am still waiting to become a proper grown up. I am 43 next month.

My grandparents were just 40 when I was born. I look at photos and they were positively middle aged. They are now 83/84 and have spent all that time being old. I just spent the weekend with them. They are frail now. When I left I wondered if I would see them again I'm abroad and can't just pop by often.

My life at 43 is SO different. I don't feel middle aged. I just bought tickets to see the Kaiser Chiefs . But time definitely goes quicker. We set off on our holiday this year, and I thought about when we set off a year ago to do the same. It seemed unbelievable that a whole year had gone by.

I remember having panic attacks about dying in my teenage years. I used to calm myself by telling myself that I would only be 32 in the year 2000 which seemed like a million miles away then. Eeeeeek!