Aging Is So F*cking Annoying
Age is gorgeous, but we were never meant to think so.
Welcome to Cheaper Than Therapy, a newsletter by Shani Silver.
Recently, as I purchased a weighted vest because I’m so old now that if I don’t weight train my bones will crumble, I reflected on the ridiculousness of aging, and whether it was actually ridiculous or if youth is just too blindly revered. What’s so great about being young? You haven’t done anything yet and your beauty products are still affordable. It’s odd to me that we routinely praise the youth for doing the minimum, and shame those who are aging for not doing enough to be young again, when being older is infinitely more enjoyable. It’s almost like we’re supposed to ignore what we prefer in favor of what other people prefer. I like being old enough to know how wrong that is. I do not like all the different ways my body is betraying me just as I’m getting old enough to actually like myself. As we get older, we’re shit on twice: first in the ways that society elevates youth and shuns age, and second…everything’s falling apart.
Aging is positioning me right in its crosshairs, and it seems to delight with each new trigger pull. We’re in so deep now that every day brings a new opportunity for me to ask myself and strangers on the internet if this new symptom of inexplicable origin is life-threatening, or just an entirely normal part of being alive and 43. The symptoms are legion, and they’re all waking up at the same time like vampires at sunset. At this point if I grew a third arm and my eyebrows started talking I’d blame perimenopause, and plenty of women would agree. By the way if you’re younger than me and you think this doesn’t apply to you, wouldn’t you rather know what’s coming? Nah, it’s fine. I probably wouldn’t have listened to me, either.