Thirties: Age of Aging

in•ev•i•ta•ble
inˈevidəb(ə)l/
adjective
1.  certain to happen; unavoidable.
noun
2.  a situation that is unavoidable.



Aging is inevitable.  We’re all doing it.  Right now, at this very moment, as you read this, you just got older.
 
Sure, it’s fun when you’re young.  Reaching those milestones was something of an accomplishment.  Ten; you’ve reached double digits, thirteen; you’re now a teenager, sixteen; time to drive a car and your parents insane, eighteen; legally an adult and finally there’s twenty-one; the champion of age milestones.  Hello trouble, hello fun.
 
After that it’s pretty much over.  Milestones aren’t necessarily welcomed.  Turning a quarter-century-old doesn’t sound sexy and becoming a thirty-year-old is the first step into a larger world of adulthood.
 
Remember those instructional videos and text books at school that helped us understand puberty and the changes we were about to have inflicted upon us?  I feel I need one again, because I’m starting to get hairs in strange places.  There’s a lonely hair that sprouts within my left ear.  I named him Ernie.  Ernie grows at a rapid pace and honestly serves zero purpose other than to annoy me.   While dealing with that, my nostrils have decided to become hippies and grow out their hair.  I’m living out the prequel of old age; a purgatory between youth and death.
 


A dramatization of turning 33 years of age.

 
Alcohol and tasty foods, once good friends of mine, have now turned on me.  Being naturally thin had allowed me to consume food and booze at an alarming rate that kept me on par with the Coneheads.  Those days are long gone.  A night of drinking leads to a day of sleeping.  Calories now linger around and hangout, like a persistent Jehovah’s Witness that doesn’t understand the words, “Get off my midsection.”
 
Working out is more necessary than ever before, and that’s just to maintain.  I enjoy working out so it’s not a big deal.  What is a big deal is my Stockholm Syndrome-esque relationship with my knee brace.  Well, it’s more of just a sleeve.  I refuse to do a leg work out without it.  It makes me feel safe and secure.  I also hate it because it makes me feel old and fragile.  I remember growing up watching NBA players strap ice bags to their knees at the end of games.  I always wondered what that was about.  I no longer wonder.  I’m not even an athlete and I feel the need to protect my knees.
 
That’s just all on a physical level.  How about the mental level?  Priorities have completely changed.  Things that used to be fun are just bland and uninteresting, while things that were once boring as shit, now seem interesting and likeable.  My taste for music is all over the place, and I can no longer make sense of what I like anymore.  
 
I suppose this is somewhat “normal.”  Aging is a part of life and blah-blah-blah.  Regardless, it sucks.  It’s not fun, but it was always certain to happen.  Aging is unavoidable.  I do not like it, but I’m fortunate enough that I get to do it.