WAIT! I’M TOO YOUNG TO BE OLD!

Once upon a time, an extremely long baby was born in a small college town hospital. I use the word hospital, because that’s what they called it. But it was more like an Urgent Care that pretended to be a hospital. The local “townies” used it for bumps and bruises, but if you had anything more serious, you’d pack up to the big city. The local students used it as a treatment center for treating college related mishaps and the occasional STD. So when I was pronounced the longest baby that had ever been born there, a recognition my mother reminded me of year after year, it would be like giving someone born in a CVS that title. It didn’t happen a lot, but each birth broke some kind of record.

I’ll spare all of you (for now) the trials and tribulations of my childhood and early teen years that seemed to drag on forever. I was basically a good kid. I did what I was told. I usually behaved and was nice to old people and animals. I did what was expected of me in school and at home. Good things and some pretty bad things happened to me, but the real fun started in my late teens and early twenties.

To cut to the chase, I was able to somehow survive the AIDS epidemic, get a job, move to Europe, meet who would become my husband, adopt three children, ascend through the corporate ranks, travel millions of miles around the world, move back to the USA, watch our boys grow into men, become a corporate executive,, bury my father and father-in-law, survive COVID, retire young and then, out of the blue, turn 60.

There are no truer words than, “inside every old person is a young person wondering what the hell happened.” That’s how it feels. A lifetime of climbing and never looking back - and then I’m at the top of the mountain and all I can do is look back. I don’t feel old - I exercise every day. I don’t look old - except that some people think my mother is my older sister, but that’s more about her not me. And she was 23 when she had me so technically I could have a sister that old (I don’t make the rules,). I don’t think like an old person, other than thinking the world is going to hell, inflation (gas was way cheaper when I was younger), my shrinking retirement portfolio in this shitty stock market, and wondering why my kids can’t turn off the damn lights.

The biggest shock of my retirement was that nobody was shocked that I was old enough to retire. That should have been my first clue. Travel status is slipping through my hands to the point that I fantasize about the furthest destination to which I can fly, in business class of course - with the sole purpose of retaining my status for one more fucking year. Sorry glaciers, I ain’t boarding last and flying economy so get over yourselves.

Status, identity, purpose were things I unknowingly accumulated and became addicted to, and suddenly I’m old and and no longer needed by those that served me.

And so here I am, at the precipice of the next phase of my life and with no fucking idea what I’m going to do next. Each new day is like a fresh white page upon which to write my adventures, but I’m frozen with indecision. That is so not me. I was always a person that took action quickly and solved sometimes unsolvable problems. I developed and motivated teams of people, had creative ideas and worked hard to make them reality. And now I sit here with hundreds of options, but paralyzed to make a choice.

So this is my story up to now and this column will be about the journey from here on out. Thanks for joining and riding along