In which there’s complaining.

So I’m riding home from work the other day. It’s past four. It’s dusk. It’s foggy. So, it’s still light out, but only barely, and my colored bike lights are lovely. There’s a light rain. It’s in the 40’s, so, it’s chilly but not truly cold, and I’m properly attired. It should be glorious.

My work day is done, nothing but free time ahead, it’s damp and moody and I’m moving my body. I should feel vibrantly alive. I should have a heart full of abject gratitude, lifted in animal joy.

I can barely feel it.

My feet hurt always now, even when I get out of bed in the morning, and my legs do too, after work, for a few hours, and generally there’s some other low-level pain somewhere else, a muscle or a bruise. Nothing terrible, really, maybe a three or four on the pain scale, but is that little pain somehow dulling… everything? Like, I can remember—

Robust, radiant youth. Good, even excellent health. Intense sensations, both physically and emotionally. Zero pain, not a single twinge. Every breeze, every temperature variation, was picked up by my exposed skin: cheeks, wrists, throat maybe, or ankles. The exhilaration of just… being alive and biking home at night in the fog. Joy.

Now I don’t feel the joy or the physical sensations the way I did. I think I should, and I recall how I would have felt, if this ride home were happening, oh, say a decade ago, but IT’S NOT THERE ANY MORE.

I reached up, biking home in the rain and mist, and ran the back of my finger over my cheek, and guess what? I can still feel touch, of course, but it is, now that I’m really paying close attention, comparatively dull now?!

I hadn’t even noticed this loss.

Anyway, I know now why old people have stuff on their faces sometimes: they can no longer fucking feel tiny hairs or drips or crumbs or whatever. Because the fine sensitivity is gone, probably lost when the collagen went, and the nerve endings aren’t where or how they were in youth.

My other senses are duller, too. Hearing, certainly, but I expected that (standing on loud-ass stages in front of gear belonging to loud-ass guitarists, mainly), smell (I did smoke for a very long time), and I’ve never been able to see, really, but the surface of my motherfucking skin?!?! I’ve since realized that I no longer get goose bumps if I lightly touch the sides of my neck or ribs. I can feel it, sure, but it’s just… less intense than it used to be. Far less. Jesus.

I don’t know, I think I thought it was boredom or mild depression or something, my lack of intense reactions to things I once absolutely loved (going on vacation, an afternoon out, riding my bike home in certain types of beloved weather) rather than just, you know, the slow and steady decay of my literal, physical senses.

But, haha, it’s the slow and steady decay of my literal senses! And just a general lack of the vitality and vibrancy of being young and healthy as fuck. The information my brain is receiving about the world I’m moving through is just a whole lot less than it used to be, and that’s why stuff doesn’t feel as intense as it used to.

I’m fifty-five. And aging is nuts.