GRAY MATTER/THE TOP SHELF

Age is the Bane of my Existence

Perhaps you’ll relate to my lack of embracement

Here it comes. My end-of-another-year introspective moment.

Recently, I’ve gone from sleeping until well past 8 am to awakening at dawn. I’m not sure what’s behind the shift other than my mind buzzing at full-throttle, more so than usual.

So many things have been battling for attention in my overheated brainpan. My dead parents. My husband’s sleep issues. The future, with no end of Covid in sight. Our catastrophic climate and the devastation in Kentucky. Old boyfriends. Our cats now (we must outlive them!) and then (will we see them again?). And the big one. Mortality.

Yes. The dread of knowing that no longer do I have forty years ahead of me, or thirty. I refuse to go any farther than that as just seeing it on the page will rattle me.

Maybe some of you can relate to this. Age is not something I dwell on continuously, but, being someone who has lived with OCD her entire life, when the “number” looms large in my mind, it takes up residence for a bit.

One moment I’ll be sipping my morning java and then the next, with a virtual slap upside the head, it hits me. I’m on the downside of life. Hovering just outside the Exit door that opens to a long, dark alley with no one, or nothing, waiting to embrace me with open arms…or paws.

I hope I’m wrong about that last part.

As the comedian and actor, Rober Klein says in his hilarious bit about colonoscopies:

“I don’t like getting older. It doesn’t seem quite fair. Your memory fades. You need a hearing aid and you lose your hair.”

Thankfully, I’ve managed to retain all three. For now.

To lighten things up a tad, I’ll share that bit with you here.

I’ve tried but I simply cannot embrace the aging process. This does not mean I want to die. Hell to the no. Absolutely the contrary. I want to live, dammit.

Aging is not a “journey” for me as soon many people in the limelight love to extoll. It’s a slog. A fucking slog. And I find it difficult to believe anyone who contradicts this, yet I know you’re out there.

I know you’re out there and I envy you.

I would love to sit down with you over a glass of wine and listen as you tell me what you find so beautiful in your body breaking down year after year, like an old Chevy that’s made one too many trips down Route 66.

In my late sixties, I look younger. That used to make me feel good. Yes, kids, even at this advanced age, I’m still capable of vanity. But lately, the evil troll that resides in a musty cave in the back of my brain whispers, “Wake up, stupid woman. It doesn’t matter how young you look. Check out your birth certificate in the top drawer of that mahogany bureau in the basement if you don’t believe me.”

And, there have been times when I haven’t. Believed it, I mean. I’ve had recurring fantasies where my dead mother tells me that I’m not really the age I, and everyone else, believes I am. That, due to some “glitch” in the Universe, I’m actually five years younger.

Damn. That’s pathetic, is it not? But, I’m grappling, people. I’m struggling. And, I’m scared. Scared that after all these years, I still don’t know what I want to “be” when I grow up. I’m mired in “hamsterism,” as my friend Suzanne V. Tanner calls it.

I’m all over the freakin’ place. Writing here, writing there and always in the back of my mind, “Sherry, you should be pitching your screenplays. Or, not. Whatever. Get off the fuckin’ wheel, already.”

But, I can’t. I need that wheel to keep me from combusting into zillions of little tiny pieces that will be sucked up and spit up, into deep space. Gone. Forever.

Who else here needs a wheel?

Being the age I am, I’m constantly targeted with communications geared to “old folks.” Missives that are designed to scare the living shit out of us. If we could take a shit, that it.

As we all are aware, the Internet is both Beelezbug and Gabriel. It knows each and every user down to the bone and will relentlessly push our buttons until we’re ready to give in and give up. And, pony up.

While I’m reading a story about the latest nutritional trend, I don’t need to see, for the hundredth time a pop-up about my “dying liver.” And, the miraculous something or other that will help heal it.

How the fuck does the Internet know that I drink too much, anyway?

Nor do I want or need to receive junk mail from the local mortuary. Straight into the recycle bin, it goes.

Why can’t humans be recycled? Perhaps that’s what reincarnation is all about. We’re recycled into someone, or something else. If reincarnation is truly a thing, then I’ll probably re-emerge as a pubic hair stuck in a shower drain. To be plucked out by some random human, and flushed down the toilet.

That said, I want to come back as me, but without all the fuckedupness. I want to have learned from my mistakes and know, without question, what I should do. What I should be.

Is that too tall an order? Of course, it is. We only get one shot. And that’s it in a proverbial nutshell. The thing that scares the bejeesus out of me. ONE. SHOT. To get things right. Or, as right as we can.

Knowing this, why do we screw up as much as we do? Is it arrogance? Stupidity? Or, do we chalk it up to “human nature,” our handy cover for all the crap we perpetrate upon one another and our planet?

Speaking of, here we are on the cusp of Christmas with no sign of snow in the Chicago area. That, in and of itself chills me to the bone. What have we done and when will we learn?

Perhaps there’s no reason to fear getting older because none of us has much time left.

Is that too dark? Should I be sorry I said that in this season of sparkly lights and jaw-numbing merriment?

Perhaps so. I apologize. I don’t mean to whine or bring you down, my friends. Rather, I’m reaching out to see who feels as I do and how you cope with such ruminations.

My husband and I are spending Christmas Eve with my sister and her family. And, I don’t want to be that “older person” who eyes their twenty-something niece and nephews with a barely contained glint of jealousy. Just because they're younger.

But the upside here is that they never treat me like some out-of-date app that’s gone the way of the eight-track.

They’ve come to my gigs when I sang lead in a band, downed shots, and smoked pot with me and genuinely seem to enjoy my company. They think I’m a hoot. A very good thing, to be sure.

Still, I often wonder what it would be like if we had the ability to “pause” at a certain age. I’m not talking immortality. Just a break in our bodies’ inevitable breakdown. Wouldn’t that be sweet? Like a Chevy Impala, circa 1960, that’s been lovingly restored. Boom. Done.

Of course, we’d probably screw even that up, somehow. That is, after all, human nature.

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Sherry McGuinn is a slightly-twisted, longtime Chicago-area writer and award-winning screenwriter. She is currently pitching her newest screenplay, “The Month We Fell Apart,” a drama with dark, comedic overtones and inspired by a true story, as well as “DEAD TIRED,” a female-driven, ass-kicking thriller.

Thanks for reading, guys. If you enjoyed this, I’d love for you to check out the following, as well as my newsletter, Sherry Raw.