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[quote=Anonymous]Here's a perspective from the other side... (and yes, I know I'm talking about myself, but I thought you might want to hear an honest perspective.)

I'm not too old yet (65) but I find the new aches and pains, and the refusal of my body to do what it always used to do easily, very perplexing, frustrating, and frankly depressing. I have always been an athlete, always worked on our farm, always supported myself for my adult life at a job I loved that was very stressful but very active and fun. I just don't believe that I feel like this.

I don't want to feel like this. It's unbelievable to me that I hesitate to run hard down the rocky path on the hill in the park I've run hard for years, because I fell hard recently there and the results of the fall were so bad that I can't afford to do that again because recovery time is so long now. I still load heavy rock into my pickup myself and unload it myself and carry it to the eroding creekbank that needs it...but my body feels the pain after doing that for days now, instead of hours. Standing on my feet all day at my job and then going for a workout after work used to be a piece of cake...no longer. I just don't believe it, but it's happening no matter what I try to do about it.

I look in the mirror and see and am truly startled to see an old face when inside I feel, and mentally have a vision of myself, in my thirties and forties.

And the aches and pains and the older face and the whitening hair are indications that the end of my life is coming sooner rather than later.

That's what the old people you know are feeling, whether they tell you or not...and the older you get the more frustrated and frankly scared you get. You are focused on yourself because you just can't believe it is happening - you've never hurt like this, you've never had such poor eyesight that you can't read the fine print on bottles, you've never had poor balance, you've never had people treat you like you are "an old person" and just dismiss you with a figurative pat on the head (there, there, dear") - and all of this happens more and more often and at closer and closer intervals..and it's frightening.

That said, my spouse and I make it a point to not talk about this to anyone but us two (and today on an anonymous forum.)  We don't want anyone to know how scared we are, and we don't want anyone to treat us as less of a human being because we are old, the way we've seen other old people being treated...sigh...[/quote]

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