To find getting older so incredibly sad

[GrillPanEddy]

All of a sudden I feel old. I'm 35 which I know is by no means ancient but physically I'm starting to feel it - little aches and niggles, grey hairs, wrinkles, sagging. Nothing that major but it just keeps dawning on me that I'm getting older.

I bump into people I used to know in my teens and think "fuck they look old".

Looking at my parents getting older breaks my heart. My dad in particular - late 60s and getting grumpy, a bit lazy, a bit slow, a bit out of touch with what's going on. He used to be so lively and in the know about everything.

I feel like my time, my family's time is a all so bloody short. Life is running away from us and making us old in the process. Time goes sooooo quickly these days, the years are merging into each other.

I don't want to get old and don't want others around me to get old. I don't want to see my lovely DH get old.

I don't want to deteriorate mentally or physically but kind of think I've hit my peak without even realizing and it's just age age age from here on in.

Makes me so sad. Feels like a ridiculously unfair part of life. Though I also get how ridiculous that sounds too.

Excellent post fanjo.
and to reiterate, it's not about looks for me
It's about loss of youth and the feeling that life is going by too fast. Of course the alternative is worse. But if we only ever posted on mn when there are not worse situations than the one we're in , mn would be tiny

I'm not sure (and she's long since disappeared so we can't ask her) but I don't think the OP has kids - which I think puts a slightly different perspective on things. I can understand how at that age you might start to feel you've missed the boat as everyone around gets older if you don't have kids and you feel time ticking away. The greatest consolation to me when my own dad died this summer was my own two DC - it was only once I had kids I could begin to bear the thought of my parents dying. My dad dying made me realise for the first time that having kids of your own is not just about the joy of having a baby, but about life going on after you. To the poster who lost her baby.

I'm not sure how you can talk about your ever looming mortality but not talk about death. I think it's most appropriate for this thread to be reminded of the alternative. And by the way, not everyone over 35, wishes to be 35 again. [smile.]

I didn't say everyone over 35 did.

But I suspect the people berating the OP for only being 35 and feeling like that would.

And surely if someone is feeling old reminding them they could die young won't exactly help?

"I can understand how at that age you might start to feel you've missed the boat as everyone around gets older if you don't have kids and you feel time ticking away."

I thought she did have kids, but anyway, I think you're right. I've come to terms with the fact that I won't have kids, but I think it does make ageing harder. I don't have a career or money either, so I'm just the same as when I was younger only look worse, more health niggles and am running out of time to change things. Many of those who've said they like getting older have said it's because they have more money. They should consider that it doesn't happen to everyone.

Lillian She does have children. I think they are very young, and I defy anyone who has young children not to feel old and decrepit.

At 35 I didn't have children, and I was doing well careerwise. I was also getting a full night's sleep, had good health and was pretty active, so I didn't feel old at all.

I still think it is rather sad, and potentially offensive to many people to genuinely think you are old at 35.

"I think some people on MN have a real problem with empathy. Because they are older than 35 and would love to be 35 they can't for a moment understand that the OPS feelings are real and valid."

It's a bit like a person who is a size 14 asking about the best way to lose weight and some size 22 people coming along saying she's skinny and shouldn't lose weight.

I think it does show a lack of empathy to moan about aging to an audience who quite probably will contain a lot of people at least twenty years older than you.

Like a slender woman telling everyone she's so fat and got to lose weight.

Nevertheless, I do sympathise with the OP. Life is hard!

It probably is offensive to other people, but a person is quite entitled to define for themselves the age at which they as an individual feel old.

I think we are all in agreement. When you have small children and are exhausted from work and sleepless nights you feel old and tired.When you are older, getting sleep and financially secure as most of us earn more the older we get in our careers, then you feel less tired,.

Unless your child sleeps less as they get older..

I agree with Fanjo. There is shocking ageism all over mumsnet but I didn't find the op offensive at all.

I'll be 60 this year and it's making me quite reflective about life and death and I'm wondering whether I'll have time to do all the things I still want to do. I'm sure some 80 year olds would laugh and tell me to get a grip but it doesn't make my feelings any less real.

I felt stressed and tired when my children were young but it didn't occur to me to describe myself as old

Well, as others have said, getting older/old is better than the alternative (to a point, mind….)

OP, I think what you are feeling is the sudden realisation of your own mortality and of those you love - our time is limited and should be valued.
I think we are unlucky to be living in a society in which youth is highly valued and age is not - really strange IMO.

I have never had an issue with the age I was/am, but I would like my tummy skin to be tauter now that I've lost some weight - that would not have been a problem in my 20s/before DCs…

My gran was 101 when she died and the last 5 years of her life were really not worth living - I'm sure she would have preferred less time and more quality of life

I value who I am in my middle-age (about to turn 50): I know myself so much better, I value myself, I am well established and experienced in my job, I look good/healthy/strong and my wrinkles are mainly laughter lines. There is some shit in my private life that I know I will get through alright when it would have been The End Of The World As We Know It when I was younger, so getting older and wiser and generally better at life is a Very Good Think IMO and IME.

The best i ever looked was aged around 38, at age 36 I suddenly became a dedicated gym bunny and got into low-carbing and got so toned and slim, fortunately for me I hadn't started ageing facially at that age and only had the odd grey so I looked really great and loved being like that.

Two years later I lost both parents and it was found at the same time my dd had a condition which would affect her health forever. I started eating crap and lost interest in exercise as these issues took over my priorities.

Now I am 46, not fat but not super slim and I show a few signs of age on my face and I have greys and need my roots doing or look like crap but I still know that if i put more effort in I could reverse a lot of it but I'm really not so bothered, it's like I always feel I have bigger fish to fry than how I look and I just want a peaceful life.

I have no real message or insights on this, I haven't thought about it much, just telling my story on body image and ageing and how life put it in perspective for me I guess.

I can remember using 'What's the alternative?' on my mum a couple of times. I really regret doing that now. She wanted to talk about aging and probably death and I used that line to shut her down - because it made me feel uncomfortable.

Floisme, yes, I agree, the conversation about ageing and time-related decline and the increasing awareness of the inevitability of death is a very difficult and uncomfortable one.
Like everything else, it gets easier with practice: I do advanced care planning with care home residents as part of my job and it is really quite surprising how many people welcome that conversation (although their children often find it harder than their elderly parents, interestingly).

Yes that is interesting Pacific. I don't think we talk about it nearly enough.

Hi - OP here!! I've been reading through with interest!

I think that it was spot on from whoever said this actually is my awareness of mortality springing up, rather than age itself.... And I half wish I hadn't posted my own age, but then I like to think that the same post could've been written by a 25 year old or a 65 year old and it wouldn't really matter - feelings is feelings. And no I don't feel any guilt for writing the op.

I do have 2 small DC and am exhausted 99% of the time. I guess I was also finding it hard to imagine a time when I would've feel this tired/zapped but the posts on here are reassuring that life gets a bit easier/better as the children get older........

You get a clearer view of the patriarchy in all its glory in your mid thirties and it can come as a shock

Math I'm really nodding along to most of what you're saying, but I think I had a pretty good view of the patriarchy from the age of, oh, about 14. Thanks to an extraordinarily sexist science teacher.

And because I've always been "the clever one" and never more than vaguely not-quite-ugly, certainly never seen as pretty or valued in any context for my looks. I was the plain one, not ugly, just plain. So I always saw just how much other girls/women were being valued just for their looks, and not themselves as whole beings.

It's a total swizz that a lot of women (including on this thread) fall for. I like clothes, I'm blonde and intend to stay that way, I keep fit & slim-ish, I collect interesting shoes, and I love luxurious fabrics. I'm not puritanical about all these things, but they're about pleasure not my valuation of myself, or the internalized misogyny which affects us all to a greater or lesser degree.

There are a lot of things I could be sad about, and was sad about when I was 35 (losing the love of my life probably rates there) but ageing? Losing my looks? It's a ridiculous sucking of my energy, my attention, and my emotion.

I was also deeply aware of the patriarchy as a teenager for reasons similar to Mulit and as those years coincided with the onset of second wave feminism, that view has informed and guided my life ever since. But math is right that it only gets worse. My work involves the intersection of sexism and ageism (one of the very few fields that being an older woman is actually seen as a good thing). The devaluing of people as they age is especially sinister for women and actually contributes to elder abuse.

Grill I'm one of the irritatingly happy, fit 50 year olds and can definitely confirm that things do get easier, well other issues are more difficult but I certainly think that young children and lack of sleep are a particular kind of hell!