Am I Old?

So how do you know if you are old or not?

Is it when you have a season ticket to the doctors as different bits go wrong or fall off each week?

Is it when a late night is 11pm and you pay the price for the next few days even though you didn't drink?

Is it when your jeans are no longer the comfiest items of clothing in your wardrobe?

Is it when you suddenly realise all the clothes you have bought in the last few months were from Marks and Spencers and not other younger high street brands?

Is it when you become horrified that the trousers you bought from M & S have elasticated waists?

Or is it when you realise you have tried to make a cup of tea in a glass sugar pot and the hot water has broken it?

Or what about when the bread won't fit in the fridge and milk doesn't belong in the oven?

Does it take just one of these to make you old? What if you can relate to 5 or more? What does that make me? Will organising a birthday party with some retro twists really make me feel young and back in the 80's again? Unlikely.

Please no. I'm not ready for knitting, tartan slippers, hot water bottles and horlicks.

Not yet anyway.

On How Do I Feel Today?

Why do I feel different every day? Some days I am really motivated and achieve lots of things I plan to do. Other days I hit rock bottom achieve nothing and just cry.What triggers a good day and a bad day?

Today is a bad day. I got my shopping this morning and did a bit of gardening. By lunchtime I'd had enough. It always seems to hit me about then. I sat down and ate my jacket potato. I then didn't want to get up or do anything. My motivation had gone. I was thinking. Always a bad sign when I stop and think. Nothing good ever comes of this.
Today I was thinking about Friday evening. I'm going out with other Mum's for a 40th birthday. That is not a good thought in itself. But why should this make me feel bad other than we're all getting older? I'll tell you why. I cannot go out in the evening without feeling ill.

It started a couple of years ago. I thought the first time that I'd had too much to drink, but it seems that isn't the case now. I then thought it was to do with eating out. But now that doesn't have to be the case either. The last time, I went to the cinema and was nowhere near food or alcohol. On one occasion I had to walk out of a restaurant leaving my husband eating his starter and main course on his own while I sat outside sobbing and feeling very sick.

It starts as a really hot feeling that works its way all over my body. I feel sick in my throat, yet I have never yet been sick. I can go lightheaded and need to sit down. I need water to drink and splash over me. I cannot work out what makes it happen. I have to loosen clothing. So now I wear the baggiest clothes I can to see if that helps. That looks really great when you want to dress up.
It has ruined two of my birthdays now. I haven't been out at New Year since it started. If I go to someones house I am fine. If I go out during the daytime I am fine.

So is it socialising, food, drink, or just going out in general? Is there a pressure on me to do something or be someone that I have only just started to experience? Am I now expecting to be ill and so becoming ill? Thinking about it certainly makes it worse. Or is it just that I am getting old and my body is falling apart?

What to expect next?

DOPEY

 

On making friends...

It's 30 years ago. You are at school. You have trouble making friends. You get lonely. You live with it. You get on with your life in your own special way. People pick on you because you are "different"; you are an easy target.
What did anyone do about it? Absolutely nothing. You remained a shy person, not mixing well with new people.
What happens today? Tests are done. You are observed. Your parents worry that you might have x, y or z. Where did the shyness come from? Is it hereditary?


In my case I found making friends one of the hardest things to do. I was far happier with my head in a book or playing on my Atari games console/BBC B/Atari ST/PC as I grew up. Did I want to make friends? No, not really.
I had a couple of very close friends at primary school. I was happy and enjoyed school. I did well and moved onto Grammar School - without my close friends.
Does making new friends get harder as you get older? I say it does. Nearly 20 people from my primary school went with me to secondary school, but none of them were my close friends. They split us amongst the 6 new classes so that we didn't stick together as a group. It was supposed to help us make new friends. Did this help me? No way. By now I am scared. I am slow to get into the new classroom on the first day and find the other 2 girls from primary school had sat together, and I don't blame them. You would think that a Grammar School would be full of like minded individuals who were there for the study and not to become bitches of the century. It seems I was wrong there.

I went through the first 3 years of senior school without a true friend. I was always the third member of a group. And whoever said "three's a crowd" was so damn right. It just doesn't work. In each year I was in a different three. The other two would meet up after school and at weekends and I wouldn't get invited. Why? Was I that freaky? I was called names and laughed at.
Why is it all the bitches are good at sport? I was hopeless at sport and so ridiculed constantly. I was last to be picked for teams. This to me was some form of psychological bullying. They were saying to me that I was useless and they were never going to be friends with me. So there I was guaranteed to be excluded from the "it crowd" for the rest of my school days. Being good at maths or chemistry just wasn't cool.

It was only when we moved into the fourth year - current year 10 - that I finally fell into a friendship that has lasted 25 years and is still going strong. She had been through the same sorts of things at senior school and always been on the outside of a group. She had been persecuted and called names that you would think 14 year olds knew nothing about back then.

I know this is part of growing up, but are children allowed the same naivety that we were 30 years ago? Would it have helped either of us to have been called "autistic" or have "aspergers syndrome"? Probably not.
Does it help now? As a parent, it answers questions, but does it really benefit the child. I hope so. Will it help them make new friends? I doubt it.


BASHFUL