11.
Our bodies were made to decay.
We are born with systems that have a finite span of life with no clue on how long our bodies will allow us to live. As children, our bones are strong enough to allow us to test the lengths that we can go to before we break. As teenagers, we live fast and reckless with the time and bodies we've been given with no thought on the consequences.
If you think too much, you’ll only ruin the one chance at life that you’ve been granted. It is only when our bones start creaking that you live in regret of what could’ve been. The inability to run with the birds or jump for the stars starts to ground us before we are ready.
Our bodies keeping our feet planted for long enough that the weeds can spring from the ground and root us into place. Or those that live in regret of all the little things they could not achieve in their short time on this earth. Like flying a kit or ice skating. Some never get the option to even try, being forced to work their lives away so that they’re allowed to survive. Or those whose bodies who have betrayed them and stolen the ability to live without assistance.
It is confusing, one can assume, or even scary to know, that one day your body and mind will start betraying you instead of serving you. All those years lived, memories carefully stored away and yet one day they might start slipping away with no reason why. What is the point in even making these memories if they will just be forgotten? They’ll join the millions of other dead hopes and dreams of the human race, swirling around the universe waiting for someone else to give them life.
We are all terrified of growing old, all of us with different reasons why. What if we lose who we fought so hard to become? What if we have to rely on others to help us live with simple tasks such as eating or looking after ourselves? What if we reach a certain age and despise ourselves for not having lived more when we were young? What if we never reach old age? And is it better to grow old and weary alone of with one who you have spent your whole life loving?
Humans are designed to love, with most finding the other half of their soul upon this earth. They spend decades growing, living loving and hating them, some making families and securing the survival of their bloodline. But what happens when the darkness and the earth claims one half of that whole? How can one continue to live in a world that stole their reason to wake up in the morning? How does one adjust to living for one when they have spent so many years living for two?
There is always the fear that you won’t go first, that you’ll have to shoulder the grief alone until your own body decides when it is time to join them in the darkness. Or the fear that you shall be the one to go first. That you’ll cease to breathe with the knowledge that you are leaving your soulmate to deal with their pain alone. For some, the thought of this pain is too much that they lock their hearts away in a tote and refuse to open the gates again. They know away the key because they deem it easier to live within their own company, than risk opening their heart to someone and giving them the power to break it. We all know that our bodies decaying is inevitable, yet we all fear it happening to us. Some even get to extreme lengths to halt the efforts of ages, but in the end it always catches up to them.
Why? Why have we stayed away from the acceptance of privilege around growing old, and instead become fearful of it? Maybe one day we’ll find the answer, but I fear we will all be lost in the wind when that day comes.