Am I old yet?

The first time I noticed the people around me calling themselves old, they were turning 23 – 23! Of course, I’ve heard the statement since birth from my parents, grandparents, and in pop culture, but not from my own peers.

I dismissed this statement for the absurdity that it was. A frontal lobe isn’t even developed at 23, so I’m sure there were more important things for us to fixate on, like if my ears stick out slightly too much (I think they do?), and if I turned my hair straightener off when I left the house (I think I did?)

Soon a new phenomenon entered my life, most unwelcome – the dreaded turn of 25. Everyone I knew who had passed the milestone seemed eager to assure me to savour my last months at 24 before my dreams go to die and I find myself talking endlessly about mortgages, health insurance and how expensive groceries are these days (all of which I unfortunately do discuss...)

I don’t wish to be rude about the valid feeling of sitting with the intimidating presence of your mortality, but I also would like to, respectfully, tell you all to shuuuuuut uuuuuup.

I personally love being 25. I also loved being 24 and pretty much all the ages that preceded them until we hit about 18 (that was rough, hang in there.) Perhaps the saviour of my attitude towards adulthood is that I have always planned to live a long, diverse life, in which I would live in multiple cities, have multiple professions and travel a lot.

As a regular viewer of The Bold Type, Younger and Friends growing up, I have always been filled with the excitement and ambition to be a young working professional in a big city. My 20’s were always glorified in pop culture as the best years of my life, and I faithfully drank the Kool Aid. I could write books or publish them, or be a researcher or political advisor, or I could not do any of that and travel for a few years until I landed on something I like.

I didn’t really mind. I just wanted to do something exciting, get paid for it and not worry about the ‘real adult stuff’ until my 30s.

To be fair, I have also never been hung up on what age I would get married, buy a home, or have children, and acknowledge that women unfortunately are still pressured into certain timeframes, by biology or otherwise, if they wish to be a mother. However, I must digress, this has gone way too far if we’re all freaking out at 25.

I know these people are being dramatic when they say they’re old. What they must mean is that they’re tired, burned out or stressed – or perhaps they have noticed fine lines or grey hairs emerging for the first time. Maybe they thought they would have achieved some kind of milestone by this age, be that career, relationships or otherwise – and now fear they’ve missed the ideal time to do so.

But these thoughts are surely more to do with realising the mundanity of adult responsibilities than the physical and emotional breakdown of your body and mind through ageing. Let’s be honest, most of us have not experienced this yet. Besides, if we feel old, disappointed by life and ready to drop all our dreams and ambitions at 25, how will 55, 65 or beyond feel?

If we are lucky, life is long. Suffering is inevitable, and all our bodies will eventually break down and fail us. I was surprised to have mine do so (in a way) at only 24, when I fractured my knee by simply landing badly on it in social netball, perplexing my doctors, surgeons, and physios as to how I managed it. The pain was indescribable and the recovery remains long, boring and emotionally exhausting.

My saving grace, as my medical team continues to tell me, is my youth and health. Young bones mend, young muscles strengthen, and young people have the time and energy to throw into their recovery.

This doesn’t change the fact that I have now increased my risk of arthritis later in life because of the damage the injury has done. For the first time in my life, doctors talk to me about the ways my bones and joints will likely deteriorate as I age, and how my now healthy, resilient, able body may start to fail me.

I struggle to conceptualise myself as an older person, much less an elderly person, but this thought alone has been enough to make me question if I will ever play netball again. I had always wanted to keep playing throughout my adult life, but what will another injury do to my body when I no longer have the cushion of youth to fall back on?

I’ve had a long 7 months to stew on the idea and am now asking my old lady self for forgiveness. I hope she will forgive her younger, naïve self for returning to a sport that broke her bones and continuing to play it well into her later years. I hope she will forgive me if one day a doctor looks over her scans and tells her that the ache in her injured knee is arthritis. I hope she also believes it was a price worth paying to not lose the sport she loved so much, so young.

I’m sure one day we will all sit and reflect on the life we have lived until that point and finally have our ‘I’m getting old’ moment, but I must forbid myself (and you!) from doing this in your twenties. I plan to give 80-year-old me a life full of memories she is proud of, both on and off the netball court, especially the ones I have not yet experienced on the other side of 25.