Does anyone else late 50s feel so nostalgic, and like life is running away from them

[lipstickwoman]

Im trying not to be too gloomy here. I've had several bereavements in the last few years, which have really made me realise how short life it. I find myself increasing nostalgic and aware how fragile life is

What do you do to put these feelings aside and live life to the full?

@PortiasBiscuit perhaps that's my problem.. I've ran out of resilience. I had 10 tough years from 45-55.. lost parents, in laws, sibling, sister in law, work was awful, kids moved out, the menopause. I have come through it but it has changed me. I so appreciate life now, I love being here and want it to last forever and it's that I struggle with.

I look back and want to do it all again. It's like being at a great party that someone is going to turn off the music and put the lights on at any time.

At the same time if any thing else goes wrong I know I'll probably crumble because my resilience is all used up.

@lipstickwoman I feel pretty similar. I've been a bit battered by life over the last few years but have a positive outlook and am very lucky with my DH, kids and have some money.

The last 25 years of being with DH has been pretty whirlwind and wonderful. We've done some amazing things, really loved, had our 2 amazing kids, been places , have smashing mates, and I've loved it all. I just want that to go on and on.

I'm feeling a bit 'what am I for?' these days. I mean I'm not a 'mum' in that they don't need me or rely on me like when they were little dependants, I'm on a break from work and when/if I go back it will be part time and is definitely not a career anymore to me, I'm way too old for babies , so what is my 'purpose' ?

It seems to me that we mostly live to defined patterns , school, education, partying, meet someone, have babies, get a house, work, work, work, a few holidays, then retire, then what? The blueprint for our parents generation seems to me to either retire and die early , or retire and close down, slow down and then die. I don't want that.

It was brought home to me when talking to my financial advisor about pensions. My prediction is that I'll live until 96 (!) but 'don't worry' he said, you won't need anything like your current spending them as you pretty much won't be doing anything by them. In fact by 70 odd you will slow down a lot. Jeez that could mean 25 years of doing not much if he's right. Sounds grim to me. I want to be that mad old lady riding around on my pushbike being all eccentric and glamorous 😂

Equally if I don't love that long, then maybe I have 20 more 'good' years left. That's nothing, the last 20 went in a flash. Scary stuff.

I am 56 and the amount of friends who have died or have serious health issues is awful. I myself had to retire early through ill health though doing well currently.

I have had four friends die in the last five years. I have also got two friends who have had cancer and other associated health issues so have had to retire early, one really has no quality of live and is very disabled. One had been my friend since I was 12, I cried more for her than when my own Mother died.

Statistically the poor die younger, were are not in that demographic there was no poor diet for years or substandard housing. You can buy as much organic veg and take lovely holidays and never have to really worry about money but the grim reaper really starts hacking away at people once they hit about 50, well that’s what it felt like to me.

A woman who I shared a house with when we were bright young things has told me this week she is being put on the two week cancer pathway for investigations.

So I get you op, I’m not depressed but I am sad about it all and my resilience has been tested far too much. I keep trying to persuade DH to retire early, I would just like us to have some time together and the past few years has made me worry we wont get that.

I restore furniture at home, volunteer for two projects who understand my health means I am a bit unreliable and have DS still living at home and his girlfriend visiting most weekends. I do love their youthful enthusiasm.

I'm early 50s and feel a bit like this. Partly it is post-Covid, because so many of the things I loved to do have just disappeared and I feel I lost two fucking years when I was in my prime ... partly is because I have hit the menopause and I am trying to work my way through that, and partly it is because so many people i know have died / become ill with chronic underlying conditions recently.

What I am doing is putting any energy I have into my health and wellbeing. I am eating better and have finally found a yoga class at a time I can attend (lots disappeared during Covid) and trying to reconnect with friends.

I have realised though life can be completely random in so many ways and I am trying to enjoy the here and now, have some things to look forward to in the near future but not look too far ahead

Everyone should be investing in their health and wellbeing all through their lives. It's even more important when you're in your 50s. You need to be eating as well as you can, doing exercise, staying engaged in life and working or volunteering (or something of a similar ilk) for as long as you can possibly can. People dream of retiring but honestly, it really is the death knell for a lot of people as that's when a lot of health problems kick in. Don't think to yourself about what you will do when you retire. Do it now!

Illness and disability can really strike at any age so there is no point dwelling on getting old. A 90 year old can be in better shape physically and mentally than a 19 year old so age is not necessarily a factor.

I look back and want to do it all again. It's like being at a great party that someone is going to turn off the music and put the lights on at any time.

Oh, OP, you've just described my everyday existence perfectly!

I'm 59 and am regularly ripped apart by great, aching waves of nostalgia that come out of nowhere. For instance, somebody in a chat-group I belong to recently mentioned an incident that had happened about 30 years ago at the bus station in my childhood home town. I moved away 40-odd years ago, and the bus station itself was demolished and the area redeveloped around the year 2000. I had a quick google search for images of the bus station as it was in my childhood, intending to show the other person what the layout of the place had been. I came upon several vivid colour photos of the bus station in May 1967 - a day when I might even have been there myself, if my mum had taken me with her when she went shopping in the town centre - and, as I scrolled through the slideshow, a picture of the very bus that we used to catch from there to visit my granny in an outlying village. I've never felt such intense, desperate longing to return to a particular place and point in time before...or such despair that it's not possible.

Intellectually, I know this is supposed to be a feature of growing older - that the brain can recall in luscious detail a random childhood memory, while simultaneously I'm standing in the kitchen in the here-and-now wondering what on earth I came to fetch. Now I'm starting to wonder if I've been too passive in simply accepting it - and all the accompanying emotional pain and yearning - as an inevitable part of the ageing process. Should I be trying to push back against it, to make new memories as sparkling and detailed as the old ones? And if so, how?

Beautiful post @AreThereSomewhereIslands

Honestly? The more the sit around pondering how long will this last, the more of that precious time you will waste.
I'm 57, of course I have conversations with my friends about pensions, several of us have retired or will be retiring over the next year or so.
We all have very different plans, one is building a house, a couple are teachers and are planning some big trips they couldn't do in school holidays, one sings in a choir, does local theatre and medical role play, I'm training as a foster carer.
My son is 18, we have lots of plans for trips and holidays.
Yes I could keel over tonight- but I'm not wasting time dwelling on it.

Once a week a visit a man in my community- he is only 63 but has had 4 stokes this year. He is a well travelled person with a good career behind him - his life is now reduced to a small studio flat, no family, he has a friend who calls once a week with his groceries and I go once a week for a natter. If my life were to go this way I want to have lots of memories and photos to look back on.

I know what you mean, OP. I'm 56. In my head, I'm 20 something . I look in the mirror and see my mother!
I've had friends and acquaintances die in the 50-plus bracket, making me acutely aware of how fragile and short life is. Other friends my age are infirm, struggling with health.

But I have an older DH, his health is failing and he doesn't help himself. Our plans for when the DC grew up haven't happened, and there are days I resent that. I have hobbies and interests, and he does not. This getting older stuff is shit..but better than the alternative.

Very British to moan & even find solidarity in moaning: I can't relate to you guys. Can you tell I'm foreign?

Californian?

Who's moaning? I was sharing some quite personal thoughts and looking to discuss them.

I turned 50 earlier this year & felt a real shift emotionally.

My dad died during covid, my mum's health is failing & I separated from my long term partner after 15 years - mostly unhappy in recent years.

Like others, I feel like I have lived the majority of my years & am unfortunately obsessing at the moment about the mistakes I have made (poor choices in men) which has led to so much unhappiness in my life.

I just feel I have completely lost my way in life & feel the best years are behind me.

I have 2 lovely DC - had them later - so they are 14 & 10. And I have good friends, did a lot of travelling when younger.

But I'll be working to 67, cannot contemplate early retirement or ever imagine myself being in a relationship or financially secure again.

Living in a flat post-separation & won't realistically be able to afford a house.

A few friends have cancer just now, which is sobering.

And I've gained weight, lost confidence etc.

Feeling a bit sorry for myself tonight.

I've seen a lot of these type of posts on MN lately, am feeling it myself, and wonder though if it's partly the covid aftermath. Like some kind of grief from it all that we are trying to process. At the moment it feels hard to have lots of hope.

I know the “run out of resilience” feeling, interestingly, a few months ago I got so run out of it I just thought (and meant it) “Fuck you all and all your needs!” Handed notice, decided not to care about people who do not care about me and that, if I am going to die in 15 years I’ll better make the best of it. I was so fed up of keeping in a good job I hated for a pension that was NOT going to be life changing, trying to function in a family that put me always down and being ignored by my son.

Strangely… it is just 3 months since and most days I just shock myself thinking how happy I am feeling, I lost my safety net but I have got my freedom back and a lot of hope in the future. Interestingly, I am getting along with my son beautifully again.

I wish you get the straw that breaks the camel’s back, the one that turns your life around, makes you throw away your baggage and give you all the strength to start again. 💐

@ProseccoOnIce
Well it sounds like you have had a lot to deal with so no wonder! x
I so relate to so many posts on here. Esp the painful ache of nostalgia and yearning for what has gone and can never be again. I am also late 50s age group .
I think covid on top of bereavements and losses has left me feeling adrift and as someone said earlier like all the ties and links to happiness are gradually being lost. I dont feel like I quite know who I am or where I belong or fit in any more.

I can relate to so many of these posts. I'm 58 next week and just recently I've been feeling sharp pangs of nostalgia and getting very emotional.

In the past 7 years I've lost both parents, my
dh, and 2 good school friends. I'm feeling unanchored and untethered, and as if there is no longer anyone in the world who truly has my back.

I have 4dc, one of whom is suicidal. I don't know what more I can do to help him, and with every beat of my heart, I dread the phone ringing and getting that news. I feel angry that dh has fucked off and died, leaving me to deal with this. I'm tired and anxious.

I long to go back to a time when life was easier and I wasn't the one doing all the looking after/worrying. I had a moment similar to @AreThereSomewhereIslands' yesterday. A friend linked me to a RightMove listing of the first house dh and I bought together, the house we lived in when first married and where our 1st 2 dc were born. Clicking through the pictures, I was assailed by such strong memories of our time there. Things I'd forgotten for the best part of 30 years came flooding back and it was painfully nostalgic.

I think once we get over 50 we all know that we can pop our clogs at any time, but that is actually quite liberating - it means we stop worrying about trivia, don't care what people think of us and make the effort to do things we enjoy. Anything else is just "what will be, will be" - I could die tomorrow, but at least I now know that it isn't something to worry about.

What do you do to put these feelings aside and live life to the full?

I notice I've gone down that route, and I say to myself kindly but firmly, that was then but this is now. He's dead, and she's dead, but you're still here. Then I try to find something beautiful to focus on - a tree, a bird, a flower, a nice colour - for a bit and that snaps me back into the present moment.

I also read widely about how to improve one's health in later life and implement basic advice, so that the time I do have left is a better one than it might be.

I look back and want to do it all again. It's like being at a great party that someone is going to turn off the music and put the lights on at any time.

Very much relate to this - especially if the sky is overcast, grey, or raining. I do my that was then, this is now, reminder. I try to draw a line in the sand, as they say. It's all a bit Churchill, KBO, or Keep buggering on, some days...

My plan is to live a very long life and become wise. I find I am happier and happier as I get older, surprisingly. But these last three or so years have been so difficult that it is harder and harder to get back on track, moodwise, oftentimes. I have a lot of interests. I think that helps, too.

Interesting. I don't feel that way or see it that way. But tbf I haven't lost anyone, or had any medical issues yet, nor had a bad time of it in the last few years.

I'm in my 30s but feel this. I've had my fair share of grief.

I’m retired ( I’ll health) I’m fine day to day.

l just spend so much time thinking about when l was a young adult. And how l miss those years. It’s like they have become the most important time of my life.

I wish you get the straw that breaks the camel’s back, the one that turns your life around, makes you throw away your baggage and give you all the strength to start again. 💐
What a wonderful wish! I feel like I am waiting for that. Our plan was always that I would retire at 60 then DH would follow a couple of years later but the pandemic turned everything around, he stopped work and I (NHS) felt obliged to carry on. Now I am still working and afraid to stop as I feel almost pointless without it

This thread is so sad. I’ve read all the posts and I hear you all. I hope you feel a bit better for putting it out there.

I know how you feel, OP.
I'm 50, and have 2.5 year old twins, and work in a senior, stressful role. I'd love to retire, but will need to work for at least another 10 years.
I feel I have a warped sense of longevity of life - both my parents are in their 90s and are completely compos mentis; they live alone and my mum drives, etc. That's my normal, but it's only now I'm realizing it's not the norm to be so healthy in your 90s.
I hope to keep my health and retire about 60 to travel and enjoy what I used to do in my 30s.

I think it's said to be the autumn of your life, and it is normal to be melancholy and nostalgic for summer days and spring times, sometimes, in autumn... But you don't want to stay in that space. I do think some posters on this thread are in extremely hard situations however and find it a bit heartbreaking to read.