Young Thoughts on Growing Old

Fleetwood Mac's "Landslide."

I had a conversation with an old friend the other day, who sent me an old picture of our old friend group. It was from six years ago; we were eighteen. Now, I’m twenty-four, making statements that eighteen-year-old me would have never imagined herself saying. For one, I hadn’t understood the concept of an “old friend”: someone that you share a history with, feel amicably towards and perhaps even feel a degree of loyalty to, who isn’t in your life anymore. There was only here and now, when I was young. People didn’t pop out of the woodwork on a Tuesday afternoon for a brief, cordial conversation, only to disappear again, this time perhaps forever. Nevermind how staunchly I would have resisted the label of our group being considered history. I knew, of course, that people said that you grew apart after college. I thought that my case was different. And yet, as far as I know, the most that has been uttered between any of us in years has been these brief conversations over text message in which we try to portray ourselves in a deceptively flattering light and proclaim, “I’m glad that you’re doing well,” and “it was nice hearing from you.” I would have never imagined myself speaking such trivialities. I would have never imagined that I would look at that picture, which I immediately remembered in perfect detail, and see that it was taken six years ago. Six years was a lifetime. Six years before that picture was taken, I was twelve years old—a baby. I couldn’t even remember being that young. Six years into the future, imagined by my eighteen-year-old self, was equally unreal. And yet here it is, and for the first time in my life, I feel old.

This feeling—that wow I’m getting old feeling that I suspect will periodically drop in on me forever—first dawned on me in the months leading up to my twenty-fourth birthday. I voiced my fears to anyone who would listen; they told me that I was being ridiculous. That I was still a baby. And in many ways I still feel like one, a curious young girl with wide eyes and a head full of dreams miles above reality. I think this disconnect between my numerical age and my internal feelings was what spooked me so much. I could not believe how much time had passed already. And when the clock struck midnight and I was officially firmly in my mid twenties, I felt the ticking of the clock with every heartbeat, felt the finiteness of it all. It occurred to me that the eighteen-year-old girl in that picture would have expected her twenty-four-year-old self to be successful, to have reached some kind of goal, when, in reality, she’d still scarcely even picked a direction.

The reminders kept coming from there. A month after my birthday, I wore a full face of makeup for an event (something that happens about once a decade) and saw the stuff burrow itself right into the creases of two smile lines on my cheeks that I had no idea that I had. When I look in the mirror now, those lines stare back at me, whispering to me that I’m over the hump. For years, each passing year was an asset to my body. Now, if I eat a muffin I can see it on my waistline. If I drink, the next day my face turns placid grey with patches of flaky, dry red skin, and my legs lose their circulation every time I sit on the toilet for longer than a minute and a half. I can see the infant stages of a turkey neck forming, if I’m feeling particularly harsh on myself. And when I saw that picture my “old friend” showed me, I was immediately struck by how beautiful I looked. My face betrayed neither a crease nor a pore. My eyes were innocent, pure, inviting—not knowing and suspicious, like they’ve become since. When that picture was taken, I thought it was ugly. If only I had known.

I was unhappy then. I did everything that I could in the years following that picture to dull my reality, pass the time. I did not know, when I was young and stupid and aching to be older and wiser, that the wisest thing I could do would be to relax and enjoy the time I had left as a child. Isn’t it ironic, how impossible it is to appreciate your youth when you are young? I wonder what my thirty-year-old self will think, six years from now, looking back at pictures from today, wondering how the hell I thought I was old at twenty-four. She’ll be young, too, to her future self looking back. What wisdom will she have that she’ll wish that I knew?

“Landslide” by Fleetwood Mac might be my favorite song. It is a song with staying power—not a song that you grow out of, but one that grows with you throughout your lifetime. I remember it from my childhood. I don’t remember exactly where, or why, but I know that I heard it often, particularly the live version off of Fleetwood Mac’s album The Dance. Once, my brother and I reminisced about the memories that this version of the song brought back to us. We have the same father but different mothers, so I assumed that this meant that my affinity for the song had something to do with my dad. What was interesting, though, was that he said that it was his mother who loved the song. Perhaps I had heard it from my mother also. It would be an interesting coincidence that both of our moms loved the same song (or perhaps not a coincidence at all, and we were somehow supposed to have the same memory of this song, even though the memories come from different places). Or perhaps we’d both heard it from our dad. It’s funny how our minds work. My father may have been responsible for some of our fondest childhood memories while appearing in none of them. It’s sad, really, the way that time erases things. Incidentally, Stevie Nicks begins the song with the statement “this is for you Daddy,” an uttering that meant nothing to my child self but now pierces my heart every time I hear it. What a great way to introduce a song about the passing of time. I always think of my own father—a person that I always assume is there and yet never seem to see, that “I’m getting older, too,” and so is he. Perhaps, when he hears the lyric “children get older,” he thinks of me and my brother, and that same melancholy thought that occurs to me also occurs to him: time is finite, and although we spend the majority of our life wishing away the days, when we do this, we ensure that the ones that we have will never feel like enough.

“Landslide” is a breakup song, purportedly. A song about leaving the person you love for a future that is incompatible with the present you share. It is a song that feels like a horror story. I don’t want to imagine a world where losing the person I love is not only a reality but is the preferred option that I actively chose, because this person is holding me back from where I wish to be. We are often scared of being cheated on, being left, betrayed. But an eventuality like the one in “Landslide” seems far more tragic, where your respect, even your fondness for one another remains until the end, and it is only your compatibility that wanes. Just the thought of this type of ending makes you want to hold on tight, desperately beg for reassurance. Never let go, at least until you have to pee or your leg starts itching or you want to go to sleep and your body won’t let you until you’re in your familiar, isolated position on your stomach, where you might still feel antsy, or nauseous, or unfulfilled. And then you might feel a bit guilty about this, because it is supposed to feel perfect, and you wonder if your racing mind is evidence that this disturbing fate is eventually awaiting you. Perhaps you reassure yourself that the very fact that your mind is racing in this way is evidence that this won’t happen, because it means that you care, but then it dawns on you that you can never know what your partner is thinking—what if he’s unsatisfied? You’re fairly certain that he loves you, but what if that doesn’t matter? What if fate is stronger than that?

A breakup may have inspired this song, but the song is about much, much more than that. It is about change. The line “I’ve been afraid of changing ‘cause I’ve built my life around you” could be about a friend, or an enemy. It doesn’t even have to be about a person at all. It could be about a bad habit. It could be about summoning the boldness to chase a dream that had previously been abandoned, or, conversely, about deciding what should come next after a dream that you’ve worked for has become a reality. It could be about death, or abandonment. It could be the words of a mother, after her child gets older and doesn’t need her anymore. It could be about marriage—the decision to leave one family for another. Any crossroads, any moment in this life that requires courage and leaves one wondering where the time went—that is the feeling that this music captures. When I listen to this song, I feel a faint sadness that I can’t quite define, but I also feel okay, inspired. Change is scary, but it is also beautiful. It is life. We cannot escape from it; we cannot always choose it.

I do not want to return to yesterday. I doubt anyone really does, when they are feeling nostalgic. That girl with the smooth face was unhappy. She was scared. Her potential overwhelmed her; she renounced it. She ached to become the person that I am now, didn’t even believe it was possible. My days are more fulfilling and more pleasant than hers. I know more than she does. But I still mourn those innocent eyes. And I fear the future, when, if I am lucky, I will be a happy old woman with wise, wrinkly eyes, looking back on old pictures with a wistful half-smile, faintly acknowledging her faded innocence and optimism. And, if I am unlucky—well, God only knows where I will be, in a world where my hopes are buried like the rocks at the very bottom of a landslide, and my youthful reflection a mirage imagined by an old woman longing for dreams of tomorrow, plagued by mournings of what could have been.

Let’s start a dialogue. Feel free to comment your experiences of this song, of nostalgia, or of anything else that this anecdote may have brought to mind.

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