I'm going to get straight to the point - I'm terrified of aging. I'm petrified of getting old, scared of dying, and worried that i'll be forgotten once I'm gone. This wasn't really too much of an issue until recently, because I've always looked really young for my age, so I haven't had that daily reminder in the mirror that I'm slowly getting older. Not until recently. I was in the changing rooms at Tesco's and I saw it. A grey hair. Shit, I'm only 28 years old. This isn't fair. I knew Tesco's wouldn't let me put the clothes back on the rack if I peed myself in them, so I took the jeans off and continued to have my own quiet cardiac arrest. Then I saw another one. Two of the fuckers in as many minutes! I stood there for a moment, considering my options and trying to remember the saying about pulling them out and more growing back. Personally, I thought it sounded like a shit theory with no scientific merit, so I pulled the bastards out and ran for the hair dye. Since that fateful day, I have been checking for other signs of aging and, to my surprise, I have discovered many.
For example, lines beneath my eyes. I know they are there a) because I can see them b) because my eyeliner no longer slides down my face as the day progresses but, instead, sits in the lines beneath my eyes. I've also noticed that my skin looks different - it's not as smooth and my skin tone is less even. Some days, when I'm driving in my car and I catch sight of myself in the mirror, the first thing I think is 'god, you look old'. It triggers an intense fear inside of me and usually leads to a thirty minute philosophical debate with myself that includes thoughts such as 'if I died now, my life would have been wasted' and 'what if something happens to someone I love and I've caused them nothing but worry?' and 'what if my life stays like this and I never actually live it?'. Again, most of these questions make me want to crap myself with fear, so I usually start humming Led Zeppelin to calm me down.
A couple of other things I have noticed - my increased jealousy of people who are younger than me, and a reduced tolerance for harmless things in the environment. For example, small children playing in the park across the road now trigger some sort of internal conflict whereby I spend about thirty minutes wondering whether the sight of them frolicking around and screaming at 10 am on a Sunday is sweet and endearing, or just annoying as shit. Aisle-drifters in Sainsbury's also piss me off, as do slow drivers, weaving drivers, lost drivers, bad drivers, bad grammar, bad spelling, childish behaviour in people old enough to know better, and the collective drop in IQ that occurs when groups of teenagers get together with a bottle of cider. I, therefore, find it incredibly ironic that, despite having an adult outlook on so many things (see above list), my own behaviour is undeniably childish.
Indeed, the list above makes me sound old before my time, yet my behaviour on a daily basis is entirely contradictory. Freud called this 'reaction formation', and I've mentioned it in a previous entry. Basically, I find my internal emotions unacceptable, so I counter them by behaving in the opposite way - I find my mature, 'adult', grouchy and intolerant self unacceptable because I see it as a sign that I'm aging, so I counter it by behaving like a child - I make stupid jokes, I get stroppy, I dress 'young' for my age, I go on and on about playing on my Playstation, not wanting kids, being averse to marriage, settling down...and, for some reason, I can't stop putting my needs ahead of everyone else's.