Too Old for This

by Samantha Downing

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.

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. I am getting too old, and too weak, to live the life I want.

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.

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

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.