Shit, I guess I'm an old man now.

aging in all its forms

My neck hurts, can’t turn my head from side-to-side. My hip hurts too, a sort of dull ache on the inside. There’s a rug-burn type abrasion on my forehead and my ear is a little more puffy than usual.

I don’t go into wrestling rooms any more. Except, that is, when I come home for a two-week span each winter. And then my father throws me in with the high school team he coaches and demands that I teach them things. But this year, for the first time I can remember, the high school kids are nearly all I can handle. Usually, I don’t warm up and I only give it about fifty percent when I’m out there. This year, for the first time, I learned that I have to stretch beforehand and give it about eighty percent.

Now this is no slouch room, two of these kids — the two who tweaked my neck and hip — are state champions. But still, there’s a feeling (a new feeling for me) of vulnerability. It’s not worrisome; because it’s inevitable. But it is new. To steal from Didion, “I’m finally facing myself with the nonplussed wonder of someone who has come across a vampire and found no garlands of garlic at hand.”

Aging, it turns out, has come for me. As, in the back of my mind, I always knew it would. I denied it. I shrugged at the years, but like the eventual reaper, the years came anyway.

And there are a few things at play here, there’s the obvious trope of aging, but there’s also the moment of being in that room. An instance of juxtaposed moments, here’s what I’m talking about: two of these kids will wrestle in college, one of them will wrestle at a Division 1 school. And as we sat against the wall, shirts soaked with sweat, I explained to him how the system works. How the Division 1 recruiting system works. They’ll take you to parties and football games. They’ll make you feel special. And that’s wonderful, it really is when you’re sixteen. But if your ribs break and your knees blow out in your when you’re twenty — as they did for me — will they still give a shit about you?

It’s a weird new stage, giving advice. Christ, giving advice is about the last thing I feel qualified of doing. Look at me, thirty-three, an almost-was writer, a has-been athlete and I can’t even turn my head without wincing. Where’s my fucking garland of garlic?

And then I look off to the corner of the room and there’s my three-year-old, playing with blocks, screaming because he can’t get them to go together. And I have to put on a new face then, don’t I? I’ve got to tell him never to say “I can’t do it.” I’ve got to lie to him, to tell him that there’s nothing he can’t do. With a cranked neck and a sore hip, I have to teach my son that limits are simply constructs, even if I’m facing those limits as concrete realities myself.

It turns out that aging, unsurprisingly, isn’t a matter of the years tacked on but in how those years weigh on me. The way that I change in relation to the years. The other day I told somebody that I’m about to buy a new longboard and they seemed stunned. Why not go with a shortboard, they said? They’re more fun. And they are, but I’m old now. I want to have fun without worrying about the consequences. At twenty-two you’re unfamiliar with consequences. At thirty-three, you just want to climb onto the nose of a surfboard and carry yourself into the sunset.

And look, I’m still young. I’m not bemoaning age in my early thirties. I’m bemoaning the way it has come at me. I’m saying that growing old is not about growing old yourself but growing old in the world around you. And maybe that’s not a new theory but, like losing your virginity and your first hangover, it seems revelatory when you’re in the midst of it.