Yesterday I felt old for the first time
Yesterday I felt old for the first time. I always understood I was getting older, heck it was impossible not to realize, my hair and beard started going gray when I was still in my thirties. I always joked that fifty was the new thirty and a few years ago I told friends and family when I turned fifty that I had hit the halfway point in my life. But I still mostly felt the same as I always had, sure I got tired easier, I couldn’t lift quite as much as when I was in my twenties, but I always put that off to my sedentary lifestyle. After all, I am a software engineer; I spend eight-plus hours a day sitting in front of a computer with additional commute time in the car. So I had a ready excuse.
I ignored the little niggling feeling that I had let up on my exercise and eating habits that I had picked up in my forties when I had a cancer scare. It turned out to not be cancer but the six months of being sick, tests, in and out of the hospital before the doctors figured out what it was and put me on the right set of exercise and medication were enough to frighten me. One of the things they discovered during this time is that I am clinically depressed. Some of the medication I was put on was to control my depression.
Over the last two years, I had slowly let my eating habits go back to less structured, not worrying about eating more candy or having the extra four or five cookies when I felt like it. I felt like it a lot. Then there was the exercise, from September 2014 until February 2017 I had been walking five or more miles per day, every day, no matter what the weather or how I felt. I even bought a watch that tracked my distance so I could be sure to get enough distance, then carefully measured my pace and recorded it so it would be accurate. After all, I wasn’t tracking steps; I was tracking distance. During this time I dropped over a hundred pounds and felt better than I had in years.
Then I got complacent, after all, I was doing great. I hadn’t bothered precisely tracking my food for the last two months and didn’t gain any weight. So I just stopped tracking my diet at all. Then we got a cold snap, and the treadmill was behind some furniture, so I went a week without walking. I had more time for other things that I hadn’t done for a while, so when I went back to walking, I walked less. My walking time dropped down to four miles, then three, then one, then I stopped tracking it. After all, I hadn’t gained any weight. Then I gained a few pounds and told myself I would start walking again, but I made excuses and didn’t start again.
I had an interesting 2018, but for now, all I will say that is pertinent to this story is that nothing that happened during the year made me more likely to start looking after my exercise and diet again.
So that brings us to January 2019, I am starting a new job. Controlling my depression for the first time in over a year — I will try to write this story eventually and watching my diet more than I had in over three years. So during my second week, I decided that I need to get back to walking, the company I am working for makes this easy since they have a long path that seems designed for lunchtime walks. So much so that my boss pointed it out while giving me the tour, that quite a few people use it for a walking track at lunch. So yesterday I went up and walked two miles on this improvised track, I was feeling good about myself. The downside of this was that my legs were feeling a bit tired for the rest of the afternoon, but I remembered this feeling from the last time I started my exercise routine, so I didn’t think about it at all.
Oh one more detail, the last three days have been winter storm central ending up with ice or snow delays on all freeways on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday and some surface streets with ice under the snow. Add this all together I get home Friday night, go down to the mailbox, notice in passing that the driveway is a sheet of ice under about an inch of snow, get the mail, and walk up the driveway toward the garage. Then about eight feet or less from the garage I slipped and fell, I think here I swore, but I am not exactly sure. No big deal I thought and went to stand up, nope, get about halfway to my feet and slip again, falling farther down the driveway. Hmm, that’s odd, I have never had a problem with standing up even on ice before. Switch which leg I am trying to use first to stand up, nope, even worse this time, my leg collapses and my ankle twists. I know I swore here, it was damn cold out, and I in my work cloaths dressed for a warm office and driving a car, not for rolling around in the snow in single digit Fahrenheit temperatures. My hands were starting to go numb, and I was now almost twenty feet from the garage. Here I began to both get scared and feel old, my mom had some severe slip and fall issues the winter before she moved south to get away from the snow. But damn it I am only in my fifties, I am not old, or am I? So feeling old for the first time in my life I crawled through the snow over to the car that we have parked in the driveway while we decide what to do with it, and used it as a brace to stand up. It was still harder to stand upright right then that I can ever recall, I limped into the garage, almost slipping again but kept my balance and went into the house. Feeling old for the first time in my life. I don’t like the feeling, I know I will have this feeling again, but I am going to do what I can to avoid this feeling.
