As I Get Older

[Didacus]

As I grow older,

Days seem longer, gets harder and harder sometimes to get out of bed. Ideas that where mere fancies before have turned into daily struggles.

Seems my hair is not so important anymore, nor what people say of me. Seems like today is the same as yesterday and the thousand other days I've seen before. What was important before was fun, was cool, it was coming to me naturally. No what is important is just a ceaseless weight on my head. A series of duties I have to perform, because now that I am older, people count of me, when before I used to count of them. I could make a mistake then... not anymore... not really.

Now that I grow older, seems I wasted too much time trying to chase silly dreams instead of seeking virtues, and now seems those virtues are just too far to reach. I barely remember what they had been in the first place. Does it really matter now? I can't thiink of it, I have to run to the store, I need to check the bills. I need to make sure my son brushed his teeth before going to bed. I have to make sure he's sleeping before I fall asleep myself, and then try to wake before he does, before all my children do.

Seems I've admitted been wrong too many times, so many times I don't believe i've ever been right anymore. Seems I knew nothing then, and I know even less now that Isee what I should learn... or should have learned.

No one asks anymore what I fear... i'm grown now, so I guess I shouldn't be afraid anymore. No one asks if i am sad, or joyful, they're too busy being one or the other themselves. As they walk under a sky of stars, smiling in wonder at what they see, as I did once, I look at the ground they are walking, just in case they might be heading towards a hole or stumble on a rock. Ya, I have a tight lip too. Seems there just isn't the time for all that other stuff. what was that stuff again? Oh well, that's fine, that;'s ok becasue there isn't the need anymore, nor the want of them anymore... not like before.

I can't teach emotions, what the use of that? When I talk to my children, I need for them to understand life, but there the ones that live it. I wish I could tell them what's to come, how hard it's going to be, how empty it all seems sometimes, but I stop myself every time. Let them have their turn like I did, it will end far too soon afterall. And they too will grow older, and have tight lips, and wonder what happened to their dreams.

[ofpheritup]

I didn't show emotion when I was growing up, there was no point to it.
I got ignored. We all did. I am the third oldest of eight children.

Unless a body part was broken or bleeding we were expected to "smell of elderberries it up" and move on.

Now I am an "emotion waiting to happen." :


I have found that holding my emotions in isn't good for me physically. You can sit on them but sooner or later they are going to come out. I'm not having a heart attack for anyone.

In 1991 I had five family members and a friend die. I was also divorced. I cried, whooped, hollered, screamed. I was blessed to have had friends that supported me thru it.

What it came down to the day I decided TO LET LOOSE was that I was around someone I could trust. Someone I could do "the ugly cry around" you know blotchy face kinda thing.

Anyway that's my story.

[Ash Wednesday]

Very good insights, opheritup. I agree. I'm pretty buttoned up a lot, but even the most stoic people have to let it loose eventually.

Stuffing it down doesn't make a problem go away.