Getting Older

I feel old.  I started to write a post earlier and I wrote the words "when I was younger" and it made me realise that I am getting older.  I know that should be obvious but it's not something I usually stop and think about.  I'm not the typical gay guy who is obsessed with ageing and feels depressed about being another year older. 

Truth be told I look forward to ageing because my life has got better with age.  I used to be quite fat for one and I lost that weight as I grew older.  Primary school wasn't the best experience for me partly because I was bullied but beyond that, I had difficulty in school because of my eyesight which held me back.  My under-performance was wrongly identified by the school as being caused by learning difficulty, they even put me into a special class, thankfully the teacher running it soon realised the only thing holding me back was my eyesight and made the school aware of that and had me returned to the mainstream classes.  I was already different enough I didn't need anything else setting me apart.

There is nothing to be ashamed of if you do have a learning disability.  I was not ashamed of that I was angry at the school for paying so little attention and taking the view that if you couldn't do something you had to be split from the rest of the group.  Experiencing that kind of discrimination at such a young age I think led in part to my understanding of it and how it affects people and contributed to my disdain for anyone who dismisses people because of what they can or can't do and what they do or do not know.

The polar opposite of this experience was my time at University where there was a strong support network, an entire department of the University devoted to making sure your time there was made as adaptive to your needs as possible.  In truth it was one of the reasons I managed to get through University in the first place.  The change here though in comparison with primary school just showed me that things do get better, and although you may meet a few people who are incompetent, you will eventually meet people who genuinely give you a sense of pride.

I've felt lately like time is speeding up.  June is not long off and when it lands we will be six months gone into this year and a half of the way through.  When I was younger - and that's not as unnerving to say this time round - time seemed to be vast.  A day could last forever.  School holidays were 3 months long in Summer and that time was an absolute eternity.  You could do so much and see so much.  Time seems to speed up as you get older though.  Weeks pass like days, Months pass like weeks, and Years pass like Months once did.  When I graduated University I felt like I had achieved so much for my age, but I also felt like there was so much I still wanted to do.  In the time that has passed since, I have in many ways given up on most of the things I wanted to do because I realised they were idealistic to the point where they were just plain unrealistic.  I focused on a few small goals I wanted to achieve and a few years later here I am and I have achieved them.  The question is what comes next?

The things I wanted in life when I was younger aren't important to me anymore.  The thing I want now more than anything is to find a guy that I can share my life with who can make me happy and who I can hopefully make happy too.  I know there will be those that say, that you shouldn't need someone else to make you happy, and I can understand why some people feel that way but I just don't.  I have always wanted to make other people happy and it has always been other people that made me happy.  I want to make that special someone feel like the happiest person in the world, and for him to want to do the same for me.  I don't want to be selfish and self centred.  I don't want to be one of those people that loves themselves so much they are incapable of loving anyone else.  As for the rest, it doesn't feel that important to me anymore.  My attitude to money has dramatically changed with age, I wanted it so much when I was younger, I had it for a time and I realised that it doesn't make you happy.  I know some people will smirk and say that is cliché and to be honest I don't care.  Money never made me happy. 

The things that made me sad weren't things I could buy my way out of or that I could make disappear by throwing money at them.  I know money makes some things in life easier.  However I don't think it can change you.  I think it only ever brings out the side of you that you were too afraid to show or could not show when you didn't have it.  I want to live a comfortable life, the dream of being a billionaire is gone.  I am not going to turn it down if I have the opportunity but I am not going to chase it either.  There are people who spend their lives chasing things they will never have, and that's okay for some people because some people enjoy the chase more than they enjoy the actual achievement.  I think in all honesty that is why some people are single and will always be single, because they like everything leading up to the actual relationship.  Once they reach it they lose interest.

I'm not depressed about getting older because older guys are the kind that are more likely to want the same as me.  Younger gay guys don't want commitment.  I've always been attracted to older guys, I've never had any interest in anyone younger than me.  In many ways that was a saving grace for me as it let me escape the pitfalls of the guys mentioned above.  I have more to look forward to with age and more opportunity than I did when I was younger and one of the sad things I have to admit is that when younger people cry that nobody takes you serious when you are young, is actually true.  People do take your opinion and what you have to say more seriously the older you get.  It's sad and dismissive but it is still true.