Phrenectomy

Hello. Today I feel a mixture of very old and too young. This morning, I cried at an Instagram video of a DJ playing at a nursing home.

End-of-life care is extremely important. I have always felt passionately about this. I pretend I hate old people, because sometimes I genuinely do hate the elderly population, but you have to look at it from their point of view as well. Getting older and losing abilities you used to perform without issue can be extremely degrading. I know this already, and I’m not even 27 yet. I worked briefly in an old folks’ community, and as much as I loved knowing I was helping, it was depressing because I felt like the only person who genuinely cared for the patients. I was in the dementia ward, so it’s not like I really got to know any of them. They sure as hell didn’t know me. But the way I saw some of these people being treated by nurses and staff was far too much pain for my 14 or 15-year-old little heart. But this DJ set, he played all the oldies that they liked. A few of them got up to dance, and you could see the relief and happiness in their eyes. I know the reel was supposed to be lighthearted and sweet, but I am genuinely sitting here crying because it really touched me. Maybe I’m afraid of getting old and didn’t want to see it, maybe I’m just fragile lately. I don’t know. I am really afraid of getting old, though. Not for the reasons most people don’t want to get old; I’m afraid of becoming further disabled and in pain. I don’t think I’m even going to get old enough to qualify for any sort of accommodations for the elderly. My body has been going down the shitter steadily since I was 13, yet I always say things like “Man, I can’t wait to get old.” That’s half true; I’m hoping I get there, but I don’t know if the conditions in which I’d be living would be anywhere near ideal. What I mean when I say that, though, is that I can’t wait to have an excuse to stop giving a shit about trivial things. Have you ever noticed how some older people reach a point where they get fed up with having to follow the “rules”? I feel like I’m already there; I’ve felt like I’ve been here since I was not even 20. I was young once. I am still technically younger. 26 isn’t by any means old at all. But I feel old. I feel as though I’ve been alive for at least 70 years at this point. I’ve lived at least twice– if not more– the number of lives one should have lived at 26. I can’t wait to be 30 in the kind of way where I can’t wait to stop being expected to care about things 20-something-year-olds care about. I don’t want to associate with people my age until they grow the fuck up. College has proven difficult socially speaking; not only do I not have friends, nor do I even want to call any of these freaks my friends, but I just don’t like this newer generation as a whole. I don’t care if I sound old, like I’m crowing about some “Kids these days…” bullshit. My mom agrees, there is something seriously wrong with this younger generation. My mom also says that I’ve been having a midlife crisis since I was 12. As funny as this sounds, it’s entirely true. From a very young age, I have been hyperaware of death and dying. I never had any experiences that I could link to this type of obsession, not until I was much older. I remember being at my pediatrician’s office at 12 years old, undergoing a depression screening. He asked how often I thought of death and dying. I was like, “All the time, brother! Is that not normal?” As it turns out, I was, in fact, extremely depressed for a 12-year-old. But that’s besides the point. I knew when my depression symptoms started manifesting that something was wrong, but I never thought of death or dying in a way that I think was linked to depression. It’s always been a fascination. A morbid one, sure, but unhealthy? I wouldn’t say that. As a matter of fact, having thought about death so hard for so long has made me less inclined to commit suicide, I’d argue. I don’t fear death, but I understand it. I know what it entails, for the most part. The reason I’m so curious is that I know it’s an unattainable experience– I can never experience death and live to tell the tale. I mean, some do. I’m a big fan of the NDE subreddit. I can only hope to have my own NDE experience, but I also hope that I do not ever have that experience. The tsunami vision was enough ego-death for me. I “took” a course on the psychology of death and dying. I dropped all my classes that semester for mental health reasons, but I also kept the death and dying textbook and read almost all of it. I wanted it to be enlightening, and it was a genuinely interesting read, don’t get me wrong, but it just reiterated thoughts and questions that I’ve already dealt with 10 times over. It wasn’t anything new; it just reaffirmed that I would be an incredible grief counselor, hence why I was going to school to be a mortician. One of my only regrets in life is not continuing on that path, but that school was so awful, I didn’t have much of a choice. I have the stomach and the heart for it; I would put the “fun” in funeral for sure, but that soured my experience with learning for a long while. It’s a miracle I ever returned to school. Alright, get out there and have a good day today, team. Try not to think about dying in a negative light, respect the majority of your elders, and be good to yourselves.