Old

Back in my terminally-online days, I couldn't envision myself living past 25. It seemed impossible, I was too damaged, too broken, too uninvolved with life. My failure to launch would slowly but surely kill me.
I hadn't learned the inability to envision the future accurately was just another nondescript part of the human condition. I've been sober for years. The older I get, the more I regret the years running and hiding, sleeping for a break from reality, inserting that thin, silvery membrane of opiates between my consciousness and the world. Not in a self-hating way, I was massively depressed. I could easily get a laundry list of diagnoses if I wanted. ADD, OCD, borderline psycho bitch, generalized anxiety. I am as understanding with myself regarding the causes as I can be, and strive to be better and more gentle with myself.
It's simply the loss of time. If I die tomorrow and realize I'm dying, I'll hope simply be grateful for the decade of sobriety and five years of full functionality I've had. When I remember I could die tomorrow, and that at best I have another few decades.. an enormous sense of loss. The kind I associate with realizing I haven't spoken to a particular lover in 15 years, and was such a shitshow when we last spoke that I'll never have the balls to reach out. The finality. The lack and loss. There's nothing to be done, this is all part of being human.

Every time I sit down and watch TV (which is surprisingly rare given the generational culture associated with my age group and the television) I see that diamonds are forever commercial where the two old people are walking hand in hand and the young couple join hands after they pass the elderly pair.

For some reason this scene of the two old people, happy and in love as ever, makes me happy. It makes me hopeful that perhaps I will not end up alone and old and with only my cats for company. Now, granted, I do not mind the idea of having only my kitties and birdies and research to keep me company. However, the idea of having a human companion is also desirable as this allows the ability for conversation and intellectual advancement in such a way that normal interactions at work or school do not provide. In the grand scheme of things, IF I am researching at this interval in my life, I will hopefully have tenure at a university.

Then I can say things like "roses are red, violets are blue, I have tenure and you don't...." and like "Because I have a Ph.D. and you don't..."

Back to the idea of being old... Whenever I see an old couple who are still happy or happy again with each other I wonder how long my boyfriend I currently have and i will last. This is the first that in a while that I have a boyfriend and not just a mutual "hey let's fool around and date" sort of guy. The difference, I hadn't realized, is quite extreme. After all, I would feel bad now about making out with that random cute guy at the party whereas in previous relationships I would have been perfectly happy and no feelings would have been hurt.

Who knows if I'll grow old with a significant other or with a wonderful gay/straight friend for the purposes of company only or even a wife. I wouldn't mind growing old with one of my old girlfriends ... in fact I rather like that idea. But she and her boyfriend that she has now are likely to wed.

All the same, when I am old....if I live to be old, I hope to be wonderfully eccentric and very much like my grandmother.