We don't have the experience of old until we get there and it keeps surprising us. Ladyzero thinks she feels old at 52 but you and I know, dymund, that she doesn't quite know what old feels like yet. Think about it; the younger one is the more one looks forward; an older teen has schooling, work, building a family, etc. to look forward too and mid-life people are concentrating on their careers and family and how they're going to pay for kids education and retirement and worrying about their parents, etc. But you eventually get to an age when all that is done, you've tried all you wanted to try and/or are able to try and working worries don't influence you any more than a woman's menstrual cycle concerns one after they've been through the change.

But until you get to a particular stage, you think you know what it is like but are always surprised when you get there, it's different. Age is like that for me. There isn't anything to "look forward" to, there's just the idea of getting older. Whenever I give up an interest these days, finish a project, it's exceptionally hard because I've truly "been there, done that" for all I can or want to do. It is hard, even with my wonderful imagination and other skills to come up with the "next" forward project.

It's hard to think ahead; I bought my husband and myself canes with seats on the ends of them because we were going to the beach and I've learned the hard way that if I were to get tired and have only the sand to sit on, I'd be in pain and danger, perhaps unable to get up at all. One's grandchildren run to leap into one's arms but I flinch because I'm not that strong and stable anymore to take leaping children for granted and have various pains/bad knees that, if accidentally hit, would bring me down in a great deal of pain. But understanding why I can't just sit on the floor and play monopoly for hours or can't go to bed and sleep for more than 2-3 hours straight/through the night and wake refreshed, that understanding is much slower in coming.

My aunt, my father's sister, is 92 this year. She wants to die already, be done with it and I am beginning to understand/be able to imagine that desire and sympathize with her. I don't want to die yet but I can see the trend of how I feel and how it's not going to get any better/easier as I age. I read a book written by an 87 year old psychologist and she talked about how one feels in one's 60's a certain way but then gets to the 70's and then the 80's and, "To be in one's 60s again!" takes on a different meaning than it has to me, in my 60s.