Too Old for This

by Samantha Downing

This girl has some bite. Good for her.

It’s impossible to keep up with advances today. If I take a nap, I miss some new technological advance. And I love my naps.

My body has been turning against me for a while now, acting like it’s no longer happy to be here. The worst part is that my mind is still sharp. I am constantly aware of my body’s rebellion.

regret is one of the most insidious things out there. Arthritis is a close second. You can’t live and not have regrets. Some call them life lessons and try to figure out what they’ve learned from each experience. That’s well and good, but you’ll always wish you hadn’t done it in the first place.

Yes, I’m being overcautious. But I’ve never regretted doing that.

I’ve never been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, but the lull can make me feel like I have one. My brain becomes a machine that spits out endless questions and worries.

We fall into one of our favorite conversations and debate whose children have screwed up worse. Not that we keep score. That would be absurd. It’s more like we’ve come to understand that there is no mother-of-the-year award, and if there was, none of us would win it. I think that’s rather healthy of us.

Sometimes I say things just to make myself laugh on the inside.

Escape was on my agenda. I wanted a few hours away from the disappointment of adulthood, which seemed a lot more exciting before it was real.

Burke also didn’t know that Marilyn, Walter, and Paul were years after Gary, when killing had become a bit like sex. First, I had to be in the mood. Next, the opportunity had to present itself. The place, the time, who was around and who wasn’t. It all had to work. But the most important thing was the anger. I had to be very, very angry.

“It’s not against the law to walk away from your life,” she says. “Adults have that right.”

But the thing about blind spots is that, by definition, you can’t see them. And mine have gotten me into trouble.

When everybody has a camera in their pocket, anyone can be the villain. All it takes is the right angle.

Giving in is a process, not a moment. It happens piece by piece, little by little, like the way my house has deteriorated over time. Some chipped paint here, a leak in the bathroom, then a loose floorboard, or two or three or ten. It takes a long time for a house to become run-down. The same goes for people. It’s one thing to have all these aches and pains, but it’s quite another to forget something important. Something so crucial. It’s no longer a sagging porch or wiggly banister. My mind is deteriorating, and that’s like discovering a crack in the foundation.

It’s not momentous. There is no giant light bulb that goes off in my head, or a sudden earth-shattering realization. This is a slow, agonizing surrender.

Judgment is one of those things you can feel before you know what it is.

There’s something about the ceremony of death that brings out my tears. I think it’s because of how funerals end. Everyone walks out and continues with their day as if nothing happened. That seems sadder than the death.

Self-confidence is the worst double-edged sword. Too little confidence, and you fail. Too much, and you fail in a different way.

Yes, people put their interests ahead of others’, even in times of tragedy. Accident, illness, missing child—it doesn’t matter. Self-interest always takes precedence. The people who are supposed to help, who get paid to help, will still choose themselves.

I can’t murder my way out of this mess.

Those pictures were proof that I had done something, that I had been somewhere.

The urge to prove I have lived never goes away.

That’s the thing about anger. It doesn’t just sit around, doing nothing inside of you. Anger has to go somewhere.

Obsession is always the same. And always dangerous.

People say they want the truth, and they believe they want it. But it’s a lie. Nine times out of ten, if you know what’s good for you, the last thing you want is the truth. What you want, what we all want, is the story we believe in. And it’s probably a lie.

We all have a lot of hope for new beginnings. No one more so than me. The chance to reinvent has never lost its allure.