Growing old together means acknowledging that parallel existence is just that, parallel; perhaps intertwined and mutually beneficial, perhaps codependent, yet separate evermore.
It is a lovely sentiment: growing old together. I heard it glamorized as a coveted experience when I was younger, before I got married. Does anyone actually know what that means though?
Let’s start with growing old. You cannot know what it is like to grow until you do so. When I was a teenager, my body grew quickly. I grew taller, it seemed, by the minute. I had gnarly purple stretch marks on my outer thighs throughout my teen years. I grew a full foot in a year. My mother refused to buy me jeans from the cool store in the mall because I would inevitably outgrow them in a few months. So, to the thrift shop we went (I am incredibly grateful for this now because it spurred my love of thrifting and I now see those overpriced mall jeans as nothing short of materialistic propaganda). Growing pains, physical pains, were a part of my adolescence as I grew into my gangly body. The emotional and psychological pains were far harder for my mother to deal with, I reckon. But they felt like nothing in comparison to the psychological struggles of growing into my thirties.
Growing older means increasing your awareness, if you’re brave enough to face it, of the physical, psychological and spiritual realities of being a human on this planet, in this universe. Growing means expanding. It means stretching past the boundaries of who you once were, of the space you took up before. You enter new space. Literally and figuratively.
Changing your perspective, seeing things from a new vantage point. Having views you previously didn’t. Like a tree growing high enough to see the roof of the house, saying to itself “huh, i didn’t even know this was up here.” Branches that reach further, supporting more birds on their stems. Housing new nests, shedding old leaves. Just as trees don’t hold on to browning leaves in the fall, we can’t hold on to old views and past experiences that no longer belong. We have to let them go. But unlike trees, we humans seem to think we can hold on to everything we remember about our pasts. Growing older means expanding and shedding. Those leaves and those viewpoints had their time.
Awareness of growth as its happening is the real dream. Allowing it to happen and accepting the bendy turns along the way, now that’s wisdom.
Growing older is a privilege. Aging is not an experience had by all, and yet we seem to try and ward it off at the pass whenever possible. “Ageless” face cream? What the hell is that exactly? Do we actually want to be “ageless”? Without wisdom, without having the experiences that made us? We may want to freeze time when it’s good and speed it up when it’s bad, but we can’t.
Growing older means accepting that life can be beautiful and simultaneously unpleasant.
For instance, in my late 20s I was confronted with the reality of chin hairs. The little fuckers felt like metal stakes stabbing their way out of the skin on my chin. I couldn’t believe how pokey they were. And they grew evermore confident. I would pluck, they’d come back the next day, and they’d bring friends. Then one little band of them got creative and hid underneath the side of my chin so I couldn’t readily see them. Until one day in a dressing room with the harsh lighting it provided, I caught them red handed. Mortified, I scurried out of the store and I’m pretty sure I didn’t take my scarf off for an hour. Growing older means accepting the new realities of chin hairs and creaky backs and the inability to kneel to see the bottom shelf for fear of locking up.
Now, growing old together. That is a whole other ball of wax. Literally, it’s sharing a garbage can in the bathroom where you can see all the earwax on the q-tips your partner tosses away. It’s being able to accept that, not only are you changing, but your partner’s body, spirit, and mind are changing too. They’re growing taller than the house, they can now see inside that window they couldn’t reach before. They can see from new vantage points and sometimes your branches get twisted. Sometimes they grow in opposite directions. Are you aware enough of how you’re growing to be able to communicate it openly? Are you willing to listen to them when they point out perspectives that you haven’t grown to be able to see for yourself? Can you stomach their back worts and chin hairs and ear waxes and wanes?
Where does your love for them live? Is it in your gut? Gut health also has to adjust as we age. We get looser in some areas, tighter in others. What happens when there’s a blockage? It can be helpful to examine how you handle an energy blockage in your own metabolic system. When you feel mentally foggy, unable to speak your truth, like there’s a vice around your heart, or a riot in your gut, if you need a release of any kind… do you feel confident in your ability to recognize it and actually do something about it? If you’re in a small percentage of the population that may actually be able to answer that in the affirmative, do you also have the ability to read another person’s energy field, diagnose and treat them without their knowledge and permission? Likely not. So you have to not only deal with your own energy fields, you also have to have the courage to let the other person deal with their own. This is their incarnation, and no matter how much you think you know about someone else, you can never know what it’s like to be in their mind and in their body. You may be aligned with their spirit, but you will never inhabit it. Growing old together means acknowledging that parallel existence is just that, parallel; perhaps intertwined and mutually beneficial, perhaps codependent, yet separate evermore.
Growing old together means continuing to use the other as a reflection of your own being. A partner is someone to project fears onto, someone to vent to when the going gets pressurized, someone to build dream castles with and share huddles filled with laughter. To explore what the hell this love thing is all about. Someone who hopefully shares your same views of how warped societal pressures are, about what it means to live, laugh and love; and hopefully has the same perspective on whether you accept putting those words up on the wall in scripty letters. It means accepting that you have your own needs as an individual, and if you don’t communicate them – either orally or otherwise – that they may not get met. It also means that you take on the task of meeting the other’s needs.
Do they need you to trim their back hair? Or do you need them to trim it because you think it’s gross? Do they need you to assess whether the wort on their back is just a nuisance, or something to have a dermatologist look at? They probably can’t see it, so that would be a nice thing to help out with as a partner who gives a shit.
Now, do they need you to make their doctor’s appointments for them, or have you just gotten so used to taking on the responsibility that you reinforce their unmotivated behavior to manage their own healthcare? Growing old together may mean some level of provisional assistance, but once a behavioral pattern has started, it doesn’t mean it’s going to be that way forever. The pattern will persist for as long as you engage with it. You have more power than you think to change behavioral patterns and interpersonal dynamics. However, it requires awareness, honesty, and the courage to converse; to be willing to ask for something different. And to be willing to acknowledge when something no longer works for you, and ask your partner to meet you halfway.
Bored to Death 