Member-only story
I Thought I’d Die Young
Spoiler alert: I didn’t
I am here! Fortunately, I arrived at old age with only a few hitches along the way. From what I’ve seen so far, it looks similar to young age but may most resemble adolescence.
In childhood, parents and teachers told me what to do and pretty much how to think. As an adult, I was too slammed by career and kids to find time to think. But as a teen I rebelled against, well, everything and came up with a new self. I broke free, thought big thoughts, and embraced the strange and wondrous possibilities that lay ahead.
Old age is a bit like that. But with a deadline.
I mean literal “dead” line.
Those same why-am-I-here questions are back. I didn’t know the term “existential crisis” as a teen. Even so, I suffered a woozy of one that pushed me down a pit of despair. It felt something like that time I toured a Welsh coal mine. As we descended a mile into the earth, I looked up the open elevator shaft to see the hole of light that was the rest of the world shrink smaller and smaller until it was nothing but a pinpoint. Then it disappeared altogether.
I was left in the inky black of absolute darkness.
Now I try to always have a flashlight on me. Metaphorically speaking.
