Ageing

I turned 30 years old this year, and while ageing in itself has never really bothered me, the ageing process is starting to get to me.  Before when I grew older it was just a number to me, a measurement of how long I had been alive, it never instilled the fear in me or the anxiety or the misery that it seems to instil in others.  I never really had any angst about the slow unending march toward death waiting with open arms.

Okay that's a bit melodramatic but it demonstrates the point of how some people view ageing.  Like I said however this never really bothered me before, except in the last year and a half my health has been knocked for six.  I've been documenting this process mainly for posterity but also to help me make sense of it all.

This decline in health started just before I turned 29 and has caused me quite a few headaches now, figuratively and literally.  Despite this, I still think I look about my age, I don't think I look a lot older or a lot younger than my actual age, and I think most people could probably guess my age range quite reliably.  I can't say the same for other people though.  I don't mean that in an attempt to be shady, I mean it in reference to my own ability to judge peoples' ages - or my lack of ability rather.

I have seen people who are younger than me by a few years who I thought to be at least ten years older than me.  I have also seen people who I thought to be at least five or six years younger than me who in reality are almost ten years older than me.  That twists my mind and I can't really understand how it is possibly.  I know everybody lives their own lives and that those lives can take their toll but I don't understand how you can diverge so significantly in appearance from your actual age and how there's very little consistency at all in society in terms of how you will look at a given age.

It's worth mentioning this is all sans-surgery.  At least I don't think any of the people in question have had any, again not to be shady but I don't think any of them could afford it to put it bluntly. 

What is interesting is that often the young adults we watched in TV shows when growing up we know were actually significantly older than the characters they portrayed, even to the point where some parody movies and skits accentuate that fact for comedic effect.  Is that the reason it's so hard to judge a person's age?  Perhaps I'm just not normal and this isn't something other people struggle with, I don't know.  Age is one of those topics of conversation that people surprisingly don't bring up that much.