Gracelessly Aging and That's Okay

I will never be young again and I am thankful. I'm happy to live in my world of nostalgia reliving 16 over and over again. My college years I revisit on occasion. I time travel back listening to the same music on repeat. I go back to what it felt like to be 4 years old and in love with Tina Turner's "What's Love Got to Do with It" and feel powerful. I think about dancing to Milli Vanilli in my living room. My parents feigning enthusiasm for my running man.

I feel old and stereotypically it's hard for me to embrace what's happening around me right now. It's not moving too fast, per se, but I miss what was happening on the internet in 2002. I lived in a time where blog posts were vulnerable. People shared their deepest darkest secrets via words. No photos. No gifs. Your parents weren't on Facebook. There was no facebook. No twitter. No fucking YouTube. Porn was a hassle. It was simpler and we were hidden and we found each other somehow. Then you shared each other with your friends.

My longest relationships are from over 10 years ago. People that lived no where near me. The connection we felt with each other because we IMed nonstop.

I know I'm guilty of holding onto the past, but some people are just that way. I will always prefer handwriting to typing. Mailing letters to emails. Mixtapes to mix CDs. Don't even get me started on MP3s, I skipped over them and went straight to streaming.

Truly minimalists, we store everything on our laptops, kindles and cloud drives. What does it feel like to print your own photos in a dark room? You may never know. I do. I am thankful for that.

I'm thankful to be old. Not even old. I'm 34. That might feel forever years old to a 22 year old. I know because of one brief encounter I had when I was in college. I met an artist and I thought, "He's an adult. What is he doing with his life?" as he skateboarded next to me as we lazily commuted back to South Station. Now here I am: his age. What am I doing with my life? I'm playing video games. I'm doing a podcast. 

I guess what I'm saying is that everything you believed you would be like when you're older is a lie. I'm not wiser. I'm still a fuck-up. I still listen to the same music. I have changed as I've experienced new things. I understand the world differently. It's like unfolding a paper crane to find out how its made and realizing how delicate and complex everything is and that I didn't really understand it at all, but it comes together so simply and quickly. You won't be able to tell when you get old. It just happens. Slowly. Embrace it. Don't miss your youth. It was wasted already being an asshole and making mistakes and never learning from them. Eventually, you do.

Eventually you realize you knew what you wanted all along.