On Feeling Old, Boring, and Irrelevant
I’m not exactly sure when it started. Definitely not when I turned 30, I know that much. Maybe at 31 when I dated a guy three years younger than me, but definitely at 32. At 32, I was basically single and as the only unmarried one in my small group of best friends, I was relying heavily on the social goings-on of the 20somethings I worked with. I began to tag along to any gathering they’d let me, until even that felt wrong and uncomfortably out-of-place for me.
For the record, I do partially believe in the old adage “age is just a number,” but to an extent. I believe 40 is the new 30, and 50 is the new 40, but I also believe that certain social situations are more apropos than others based on your age. And personally, for me, attempting to still do the “bar scene” at age 32/33 was a rude awakening that I didn’t belong there anymore.
Alas, being the only single friend left me with few options. I could lean into the blessing that I’ve always looked younger than I am and continue to join my younger friends on their late night bar crawls. I could choose to make hanging out quietly with my married friends my new social life. Or I could sit at home and pout about it all and become overwhelmed with the worst feeling there is—nostalgia. Turns out, I would craft a balance of the latter two options.
Then, as the story goes, a global pandemic shut down the world and kept us exactly where we were for a then undetermined amount of time. I got on Bumble. I met Zac. And suddenly all the woes and worries I had about what to do with my spare time disappeared as we stayed in for an entire year with nowhere to go and no one to see but each other. My social schedule had solved itself, and it’s not lost on me how lucky I am that this became my situation. All my fears about being “too old” for this that and the other dissipated—until spring 2021 when the world began to slowly open back up again.
After a year in a bubble, emerging from it has very quickly brought back all those thoughts and feelings of being “so old”—they just look a little different now. I mean, think about it—an entire year went by without any sort of bar scene or social hour. Trends changed. Places closed, places opened. The world was still turning even if we were sitting inside on the couch with absolutely zero awareness of that slight rotation. I went into 2020 single and miserable at a job that had started falling apart, and came out with the love of my life and working as a full-time freelance writer. Life continued to happen even though it felt and looked really odd for most of us.
Now, being back out in the world, for the first time in my life I feel my age and it’s very jarring. You see, I’ve always struggled with “growing up.” I’m the baby of the family, a social butterfly, and an Aries, and this combination has resulted in a lot of resistance to, ya know, being an adult? Accepting responsibility? Saying no to that third, fourth, or fifth drink? The entire concept of considering yourself a true adult and “grown woman” is foreign to me. Like what? Me? “Grown”? A real woman? I’ve been subscribed to Brit Brit’s notion of knowing I’m not exactly a girl anymore but I’m most definitely not a woman. But after stepping back into the world the last few months, I’ve never felt more like a grown ass woman. I have stability now. I’m not the token single friend who’s dating around and squirreling away disappointment after disappointment. Zac is my partner. We live together. We will get married. No more drama. Is that why I feel boring? The sheer stability of it all? So much of my persona was embedded in crying over men and lamenting about love—is stability a snore (just call me Carrie)? (For the record, it’s not a snore. It’s incredible and what I’ve craved my entire romantic career).
But I digress. The point is that, now, everyone looks 15 to me. They could be 27 or 24 or 19, and they look 15. The fact that I can no longer accurately decipher the age of everygirl can only mean one thing—I am old.
Everyone wears crop tops. Look, I wear crop tops but like slightly cropped tops. Like cropped tops that meet the top of my high-waisted jeans. These girls are back in the early 2000s, belly buttons out and proud. Really their entire torsos are out. They’re in bras. All of them. The fact that I think this means I am old.
People are out at bars past 10pm. What is this? What are you doing? What do you mean “drinking”? How is that fun? You’re just drinking out in public until all hours of the night with no cap and no greater goal in sight? Go home. I am old.
People still go out in groups. They’re rolling like 5, 8, 10 people deep. Who knows that many people? Better yet, who likes that many people enough to socialize with all of them at the same time? I am old.
Why is everyone so hot? Like the girls of today make me uncomfortable with their levels of hotness. I was never that hot. Maybe I was but completely blind to it? But I don’t think so. I was thinner and cuter, for sure, but never uncomfortably hot. Like, at age 22/23 I was working at a TV station and wearing LOFT pencil skirts and old woman blouses. I blame the Karjenners. Like not until these past few months have I ever noticed the young girls around me and thought, “They are very hot. I am old and gross.” Suddenly I feel like I need to only wear slacks and closed-toe shoes and clothes that cover me up entirely otherwise I’ll look too try-hard. I’VE NEVER FELT THIS WAY. I AM OLD.
Feeling “old” or feeling like my actual age has also led me to also feel boring. Irrelevant. A has-been. I posted some of my rambling thoughts about these feelings today on Instagram, and so many of the responses I got were incredibly insightful but a fellow Aries really nailed it for me:
“We’re aging out of the prime demographic, we’re witnessing (for the first time) the cyclical nature of trends, watching girls born in the 2000s adopt what we wore in our adolescence and make it new again. It’s a bizarre thing to witness the recycling of things that in some ways defined our childhoods, things we felt like were ours. It makes me acutely aware of our age in relation to the next gen. This is all to say, you’re not alone. And maybe the pains of growing don’t ever actually end - maybe we feel them in phases. With every new decade we get to experience the joy of growth and the grief of growing up.”
That’s exactly it. For the first time in our lives, we’re acutely aware that we’re no longer the generation of now. We’re older. The next gen is happening before our eyes. They’re of-age now and, like my friend said, adopting trends of our adolescence that used to be in and are making them in again. We’re now our parents, rolling our eyes and saying “Oh god. I remember when wide leg pants were all the rage!” And I won’t lie—the whole middle part vs. straight part and skinny jeans vs. straight leg jeans war between Gen Z and Millennials most definitely triggered me. Because it made me feel OLD.
All of this has made me face my own mortality, something I truly never ever thought twice about save for a few existential crisis moments in my preteens (i.e. what is life? What happens when you die? OMGOMGOMG). You go through life considering yourself invincible whether you’re consciously aware of it or not. Then one day, the fact that you are getting older, they’re getting younger, and that someday soon, you’ll have young ones of your own that you’ll watch grow then take over your throne is absolutely bizarre but it’s happening. Right now. Like before you know it, you too will be a 45-year-old mom (God-willing) with kids and finally understand exactly why your mom was the way she was.
But I know there’s so much beauty in feeling your age and leaning into growth, too. So many of you (especially those reading this right now) have been with me since day 1 back in 2010 when I started this blog. We’ve grown up together, albeit virtually and as strangers, but together. I know that relevance and age are relative and that many of you are in the exact same spot as me or damn close and find my “normal” life anything but boring or too old for your taste. You relate and you relate hard, and YOU are what I’m here for. You guys continue to make me relevant, and I hope that by sharing my everyday musings, I make YOU feel relevant in return. We’re all just growing up and growing old together, after all.
