Aging sucks.
This is a list of things that are off my mind on a Wednesday evening:
– My arthritic knees need to be replaced.
– My right shoulder and my left shoulder are differently aching due to different problems with my cervical spine.
– My lower back aches from a 10-year-old surgery that repaired the acute crisis but left me with chronic pain.
– And my left ribs tingle with nerve pain from the surgery 10 years later.
– My ankles are sore.
– I’m lonely and sad and tired.
– And after an hour sitting, drinking in a bar, and talking with people in their 20s, it’s undeniable that my hearing is not what it once was.
I look at young women and I feel my youth receding and my death approaching.
Header image prompt (openai): Large-format color photograph, harsh on-camera flash, tight environmental frame: a bar booth at closing time, Wednesday night, seen from a low angle that makes the vinyl seat look enormous and institutional. A half-finished glass of amber liquid sits on the sticky table surface, one cocktail napkin crumpled beside it, the overhead neon casting a too-red glow across everything. On the bench, a single pair of reading glasses sits open and abandoned, one lens catching the flash white-hot, the other dark. The red is too red. The empty seat is too empty. The glasses look back.