To find getting older so incredibly sad

I'm also 35 and have suddenly started feeling exactly the same as you OP Having children just seems to have sped things up. My eldest started school this year and it seems like a blink of an eye since I brought him home from hospital. It feels like the time is just slipping away. In my head I'm about 24 and have just left uni. In reality, it's 15 years since I left.

I'm hoping my fear will improve when the kids sleep better and I have more time for myself. At the moment, I can barely remember anything from the past five years due to severe sleep deprivation.

I wonder if these niggles, aches etc could be improved with a change in diet, life-style etc. Agree with all the posters though who say getting older is a privilege. A few years ago a close friend of mine suddenly died aged 31. They had so many plans for the future they never got to carryout.

well, I don't fancy the alternative

Life gives with one hand and and life takes with the other. It has been my experience that with every "era" there have been some great new positives and positives from the era just past that I am sad to say goodbye to.
Aging requires generosity. We all need to "vacate the space" and let others fly the flag for a while.
The process of change can be hard though!

Some poor sods dont have the privilege of making old bones.

radiator thanks that's encouraging!

I am a bit surprised you feel like that at 35 to be honest! I am 46, coming up 47 with a four year old and a 17 year old who ages me more than anything and I feel fitter and stronger than I have for a long time and think I look better than I did in my 30's am probably deluded.

Try not to dwell, eat well, exercise, take care of your skin. I am sure you look nowhere near as aged as you feel!

You need to get a grip. You will never again be as young as you are today. Make the most of it. Ten years from now you will look back and think how young you were now. No one gets younger - you have one life and you have to live it to the full not spend your life looking back and wanting to turn back the clock. If you don't like the way you look then do something about it - make sure you always look as good as you possibly can. In years to come you will look at a photos of how you look now and wish you could look like that again. Embrace every stage of life - you are 35 for goodness sake. The only alternative to not getting older is death.

It can be tough, especially living in a youth obsessed culture as we do. I'm sort of enjoying the passing of my life, each new phase, but then I'm younger than you OP. The way I try to see it, regarding age, is that you either get there or you don't. I prefer Option A.

I do feel scared of age 75+. I've seen my two grannies gradually deteriorate health wise after their late 70s. Living to their 90s is great in theory but each year more bits stop working and their lives become more restricted and painful . I don't want to spend several years housebound.

That's a bit different to a few wrinkles in my 30s though...

I found it very difficult turning 35. It was a shock. Everyone talks about 30 and 40 as being big significant birthdays but actually 35 hit me the most. I'm early 40s now and got over it but I can empathise with how you are feeling.

YADBU. I am really old compared to some of you (50!) but it is fantastic.

I am fitter than I have ever been. I am the smallest size I have every been. I have had more years to get fit and toned than a youngster!

I know what clothes and looks suit me so shopping is a pleasure I do not have to stick to high fashion.

I have more money than I have ever had (mortgage paid off)

I have wonderful DC's who are now pretty much independent but still very much in my life but more for fun things rather than making pack lunches, or having to go to soft play centres :)

I have more of my own time to do what I want to do.

I have fully understood that No is a sentence and can do what I want not what I feel I ought.

I honestly right now would not go back to my 30's if you paid me :)

35? You're a child.

You know whats MUCH sadder than getting old? NOT getting old. Neither of my parents made it past their mid 50's. I expect they wouldn't have been sad about getting older.
I don't expect to get old. I'd be delighted to though.

Aging isn't the unfair part of life. Not aging is.

I feel like this too op. My dc are 5 & 3 and I just want to be with them forever!! I do feel grateful to be here and am not moaning about getting older-it's more of an melancholia about it. There are great parts, too-I'm much more confident and becoming much more of an active, vocal feminist.

Minipie - I was you at 35. I looked shocking aged 35/6 just after number 2 arrived. I now have a bit more time and a lot more money to go to haurdresser!

youth, they say, is wasted on the young...

worrying about grey hairs, sagging and wrinkles - jeez. Burn every sleb magazine, stop watching shrieky talentless shows, put down the i-brick and look at REAL people.

you are all bigger and smarter than to be influenced by the media. Aren't you?

I'm almost 45 and feel pretty good about myself...the odd sprout on the chin notwithstanding. Highlights help! Biggest shock I've had was unexpectedly having a hip replacement at 41. That made me feel old....but 4 years on I cycle about 50 miles a week and recently skied about 50km a day.

My mum died in her fifties (smoked a lot - cancer- what a waste) and now my dad is slowing up (mid 70s). That is sad.

I'm 35 and feel fairly ancient. I don't look all that great either.

But, I think this is more to do with having two small non sleeping children than my age. I see women in their 40s who look better and fitter than me, I think because their children are older.

I fully expect to look and feel a lot younger in 2 or 3 years' time when they please god both sleep through most nights and I have time to go to the gym and hairdressers a bit more regularly.

OP how old are your children?

58 and loving it. Loving it. OP, just keep going, it gets better and better.

YANBU, ageing is a thing that puts us in touch with our own and others' mortality. My experience (I'm in my early 50s) is that angst about ageing has gone in waves. It hit me very badly when I was about your age, and suddenly became aware that I wasn't young any more, and lots of options were increasingly closed to me. I wasn't a youngster just starting out with the world as my oyster, and my parents were becoming the older generation (my mum died around that time too). For about a year I found myself having bouts of sadness about getting old. That then got taken over by feeling much more sure of myself and less worried about the future/what others thought of me than in my 20s and early 30s. Late 30s and early 40s were great, but then I had another wave of sadness in my mid-40s. That too came to an end, and so far, I'd say on balance my 50s are a blast. Stay with it, OP, you're not BU and this phase is likely to pass.

I will admit I felt great at 35 and didn't start to feel older till I got to about 48.

I think us older ones are saying it's the mindset that is more of an issue than the arrival of grey hair etc. I had my first grey hair at 26, my poor older sister was only 18 when she got her first.

op i feel as you do only have some pity, i am 51 so my parents are a lot older, i have a lot more grey hair & wrinkles...... . i bet you are still having periods? i haven't had one for a year now and miss them. i HATE being in my 50's and not in a vain way, but in a sad 'my life is more than half way through' way . just you wait until your meno' symptoms start kicking in, it STINKS

Yes I feel exactly the same. I'm 36 but somewhere in my head I'm still 18, and from time to time I glance in the mirror and get a shock. A few gray hairs, tired eyes, I'm just not young anymore and I hate that. Or worse, I meet someone who's actually 18 - ouch! I think when you're young you just imagine you'll stay young forever, and I'm certainly finding it quite hard to come to terms with getting older.

Obviously I'm grateful to be alive, I don't think the op was saying that she wasn't!

Totally doesn't bother me at all, I am much older than you could be your mother and I honestly don't feel 'old' (am sure I look it though ).

Slippery - I didn't even have a child until I was 42 !! I guess as my parents are still healthy and enjoying life in their 80s I compare myself to them and feel 'young'. .

I think I am happier as I get older, I am so much less bothered about other people's opinions and am much happier 'in my own skin'. And I don't give a rat's arse about what I look like which probably helps !!

I'm in my mid 40's and as I see it the alternative to ageing is being dead.

I know which I prefer.