Oh fuck yes! Seeing friends age! I kinda expected/was prepared for seeing the change in female friends, COMPLETELY unprepared for male friends to start looking old!
Recently caught an up to date pic of ex on FB - he's grown a beard and apparently now needs glasses - barely recognised him and we were married 10 years together almost 14!
But the worst? Bro's best mate, started looking kinda like his dad 5/10 years ago, he had a birthday recently and posted on FB - looks like his GRANDAD! He's only 45! And he's not in bad shape or ill or anything he's just gone very grey very quickly.
A few people (old classmates) have sent me friend requests in last year, due to most women do still change name on marriage I've had to ask other friends I've known from school "I've had a friend request from Susan smith - don't recognise pic do I know her?" Reply "yea course you do! She used to be Susan brown you sat next to her in English and shared a tent on that guide camp" how the fuck do I not recognise them? They look COMPLETELY different!! the only one that doesn't we suspect has had more than a little work done
One of them part of the reason I didn't recognise her was her hair colour - except she wasn't dying it and wasn't grey - she's just gone back to her natural brown whereas I ALWAYS knew her as a blonde I honestly thought it was her natural colour! That was a shocker!
"Mind you, my mum says we're lucky that our old gang is still meeting up at weddings.
She meets hers at funerals."
I do sadly remember my gran saying after returning from the funeral of her closest friend "that's everyone gone now, there's nobody of my generation left" and honestly that's the point at which she really started going downhill. I know Drs etc will say it was her age and X conditions etc but it was literally within a few weeks she went from active if achey to bedridden.
Heartbreaking. It also really threw me how much her friend dying hit me, it took my mum pointing out that this lovely lady (and all her family) had been on the periphery of my own life and family all MY life so it was bound to have an effect. Odd the things that catch you out. Gran and her friend had met at work, they were 14 when they first met and hit it off and in their late 80's when she passed. They'd seen each other through marrying, having babies, having mc, becoming grandparents, losing their own parents and siblings, serious illness of their husbands, widowhood, their own ageing and failing health... Sadly as tends to happen we've mostly lost touch with that family now, though I think mum is still in touch with one of her daughters.
Dowser bloody well done you doing all that driving! As evidenced on this thread there are people 20 years younger struggle with it, I've not driven for almost 9 years due to meds, although they've been changed recently so I can think about it again. I'm working to overcome housebound agoraphobia at the moment but I'm hoping next spring/summer I can get out and about more and that may include driving again.
My mum actually really doesn't look her age, neither do me or my siblings. When she was still working I turned 40 and she had several colleagues saying that they didn't think she was old enough or that if she was she must have been a teen mum! She was mid 20's when she had me. So not particularly young. I also had a few people thinking I was kidding on when I said I was turning 40. Lovely compliments but I don't see it myself. I get a bloody great shock when I look in the mirror! Grey hair, sagging skin, and serious weight gain (again partly meds) without wishing to brag but in my 20's I was slim and quite pretty and that's still the image I have in my head.
Does anyone else experience this? That you also have friends/family that you knew from much younger that you still have how they looked then stuck in your head? So when you see them now it doesn't match?