How old do you feel? I don’t think I feel much different to when I was 18. I’ve learned a few lessons along the way. I’m pretty sure I’m still the same person I was. But I don’t feel much different to when I was 18.
Yes, both my parents are dead, as are my only uncle and auntie and obviously my grandparents died in the previous century. My stepmother in Canada is very much alive, as are my two half brothers. I’ve lost a few friends over the years, too. But I don’t feel much different to when I was 18.
I can’t play active team sports anymore because all those injuries I picked up when I was younger have come back to haunt me. My hands are arthritic and my knees are starting to creak so much, it’s hard to get up again when I am on my knees, either begging or trying to retrieve something from a low drawer. That back injury I suffered in 1982 still plays up and since I gave up smoking, I acquired asthma, so I wheeze like the smoker I was nearly 30 years ago. But I don’t feel much different to when I was 18.
I’ve never been a Paul Newman in the looks department, but I was always just okay with what looked back at me from the mirror. That said, I have never liked photos with me in them. These days, I am full of self-loathing in a variety of different ways, particularly though not solely in what I look like. Carly Simon once sang “You had one eye in the mirror, as you watched yourself gavotte“, but I can honestly say I always look the other way for fear of seeing myself. But I don’t feel much different to when I was 18.
I’d be in therapy, as trendy middle class folks might call it, for some years by the time I was 18, with regular trips to psychiatrists and “Off The Record” on the agenda (if I’d been organised enough to have an agenda: I wasn’t and didn’t). I had night terrors and panic attacks, had soon to be diagnosed clinical depression and, until this year, undiagnosed ADHD. I still have all of these things today, which shows that the therapy wasn’t entirely successful, but the drugs did work, at least a bit. Now there’s no meaningful therapy offered by the NHS. But I don’t feel much different to when I was 18.
I was no good at anything at school. Everything was a mystery and nearly everything still is. I can’t do any form of division without a calculator and even then I can easily get into a mess and – this won’t surprise you – I have no idea about how to write properly, like what most people do. My brain is still a sieve, I can’t remember anything unless it’s something unimportant, nearly everything I did learn I almost immediately forgot. But I don’t feel much different to when I was 18.
My physical faculties are beginning to fail me, my mental faculties almost certainly are, too, although I suspect others will notice that decline quicker than I will. Now where was I? I’m even more of a fussy eater than I’ve ever been and when the (low) mood takes me, I really don’t want to go anywhere nor see anyone. And sometimes I don’t particularly want to live but soon give my head a big wobble and remember that I don’t want to die. But I don’t feel much different to when I was 18.
Lines form on my face and handsLines form from the ups and downsI’m in the middle without any plansI’m a boy and I’m a man
Those were the words of Alice Cooper in his song I’m Eighteen, released when he was … er … 23 and to this lowly member of the geriocracy, he’s singing about me. Because I’m full of the lines of age, admittedly nearer the end than the middle (of life), but definitely still without any plans, which makes me both “a boy and a man”. Doubtless, I’ll soon be living in a world of slacks, of polo neck shirts and sandals, of tea with biscuits, of SAGA cruises, of reading the Daily Mail and hating everyone, but mainly people who are younger than me, of coach holidays to faded seaside towns, of listening to those ghastly oldies stations on the radio because this is the journey supposedly travelled by everyone before we ascent to heaven/turn into worm food (delete where appropriate). I should feel that way. But I don’t feel much different to when I was 18.
