In which I vent about the strange side effects of surviving for five decades.

I’ve been unusually healthy most of my life, I think.

Always felt robust and fine the majority of the time, barely even noticed my body. Had one surgery, wisdom teeth out, and a root canal. A ganglion cyst on my left wrist that cleared up on its own, as they do. No major broken bones or ER visits or in-patient hospital stays, or anything, really, beyond colds and flus. Have never had a regular GP my entire adult life.

I’ve felt truly fucking miserable, yes, but save the puke-inducing pain of a prolapsing uterine tumor it was always the mental pain of panic/anxiety rather than genuine physical malfunction.

Well, now my whole body is turning strange and foreign!

I have actual pain, low-level and fairly frequent: feet, knees, hips, and back. Usually from strain or extra activity, but sometimes just because I slept or moved weird. My hands have ached since I started banging them around at the cheese shop, and now I find it hard to squat during a 6 or 7 hour shift because it actually hurts to stand back up.

My hands and lower legs swell, especially at work (but also in a fairly predictable way throughout my cycle these past few years), and I now wear compression socks.

Today I walked home from work just past four o’clock — it’s a five minute walk, about two blocks — and, even though it’s mid-September, it’s 91F and humid and very sunny. The side of my body that was both sunward and exposed/not covered by my dress is burnt. Burnt! In five, six minutes! My left forearm and the outside of my left hand, and my neck and upper shoulder on the left side are red and hot and sunburned!

I mean, I do have very oily skin, and I’d just been working food service for seven hours so I’d been perspiring and was additionally covered with mist and damp from doing dishes, but damn! I used to tan; had to be out for hours to burn.

The other day I thought I had had an allergic reaction to some cucumber-aloe facial mist, but now I wonder if it might have been a reaction to the sun? I sat in the sun outside the coffee shop to write in my notebook, and was dark red everywhere the mist — and the sun — had been when I got home. (I rinsed off in cool water and the red cleared away, but now I’m not so sure it was the mist. I really don’t want to develop allergies; they sound like a pain in the ass.)

Aging is so, so strange. Total lesson in non-attachment, having one’s reliable, rarely-changing body come up with new and strange ways of being. I remember the first time my lower legs and ankles decided to swell up toward the end of my cycle (it was in my early 40’s), how freaked out and distressed I was at the idea that Something Was Very Wrong; now I’m used to it, more or less, I guess, but it doesn’t look particularly attractive.

And now instant sun burns? Really?! What the hell.

I’m also slowing down! I’d rather get up earlier and plod through my getting-ready-for-work process than haul ass through it, and I never thought my Type A ass would ever turn into such a person. And at work, well, now I’m glad I’ve always been focused on efficiency because I need that efficiency more than ever now. I find it hard to really rush, at least in a sustained way. (Most of my cheese shop co-workers are older folks, thank God, because I don’t think I could keep up with a bunch of 20-somethings anymore, and MAN is it fucking weird to say that.)

Being lazy and maybe working a bit slower than one should or could: that’s a decision. Now, my very best rush, when making sandwiches, for example, is not what it used to be, even if I do have a big cup of coffee in me. I have a hard time hauling ass like I used to, because I end up dropping shit or being messy and also I don’t really have the energy or ability to fully do so like I once did.

Then there’s also the questions of genes — how much of my experience of aging is just how this body is programmed to age — versus the decisions I’ve made: everything from vegetarianism to never being particularly physically active to partying to smoking for 31 years. Like, if I’d eaten a different diet and worked out, and never gone to Dead shows on LSD, would I still have these cankles? I’ll never know, since this body is the one I live in and there’s no control body to compare it to. But I do wonder, though.

Anyway, I don’t think I’m dying or anything, but I’m more aware of the body than I’ve ever been because it does stuff now, stuff it never used to. It reacts to the world in sudden and mildly alarming ways! It swells up, gets tired, aches, gets varicose veins (!), gurgles, and wakes up four times a night for no fucking reason at all. I think I’m getting a mole on the back of my left hand (?!), and probably age spots. My skin is thin and odd. My right eyelid sags. I might need a dermatologist for possible nascent skin tags on my throat. I may be too thin-skinned to do dishes at work without gloves; I suspect it can no longer tolerate the industrial soap, sanitizer, and bleach.

It’s just weird, getting older. That’s my whole screed: it’s just weird.

In short, I’ll be turning 50 in two weeks, and I totally feel it!

Update: So I’ve put a wet cloth on my burnt neck and after an hour and a half in the air conditioning the red’s nearly gone?