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[quote=Anonymous]I have a birthday coming up soon. I'm in perimenopause, and I've also been dealing with chronic pain issues for the last 9 years. And I do sort of have PTSD about it. My pain was unmanaged and VERY bad for several years, and I would have suicidal ideation (although I never acted upon anything). It's better now, but sometimes it flares, and I have a lot of anxiety about it.

Every time I talk to my mom, who is in her early 80s, she tells me about all of the horrible problems she has that the doctors don't take seriously. She basically says--well--that's just getting older. But I mean it's stuff like chronic migraines, not being able to sleep lying down because of heartburn (seriously, she has slept in a chair for over 10 years now), arthritis in her hands, these weird things called tori in her mouth and TMJ, chronic stomach problems that are very debilitating for at least a week out of every month, stabbing pains in her eyes, double vision at night, blood pressure that goes up and down very fast so she feels like she might faint....etc....it goes on and on, and she does go to doctors but they just don't know why and say she's okay. So, she just lives with it. And she doesn't have a lot of things going on in her life--which is her choice. She is afraid to travel because of her unpredictable health, which I understand.

And then I have this friend who is all rah rah about my birthday. It's very nice, but I don't want to live to be very old. People think that's such a weird thing to say. I'd like to die around 65. Of course, we don't get to choose, and I don't want to suffer. It's specifically the suffering of getting older I want to avoid. But when I hear about people who die very suddenly, I am sorry for their families, but I secretly think they were lucky. I think about people my age or younger suffering with cancer who are trying to hang on--maybe for their kids or because they want to live. But even when/if they recover, they're left with neuropathy and all kinds of other things from the drugs to kill the cancer.

I feel like there are no "golden years." We're taught about this vision of getting old and enjoying retirement, but I don't see that. I just see pain and suffering and more and more problems that no one knows how to fix. Is that really that weird? I know I have a skewed viewpoint because of my chronic pain. But I just don't understand why we, as society, sort of celebrate getting old (as much as we also invalidate and ignore old people).[/quote]

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