MY LIFE AND THOUGHTS

I’ve been working out, sleeping more, eating better, using anti-aging targeted skincare products packed with Retinol and vitamin C, wearing sunscreen, and keeping my mind active and honed lest it slows down. I’ve been taking vitamins E, C and Calcium diligently. I’m ready for that time of my life when I’m no longer young, yet not quite old. (Even if my brain keeps telling me I’m still only 28, hehehe)

But just when I’ve found all the reasons why I’m at the threshold of the best time of my life, I’m freaking out again.

I realized a while back that older people are just extreme versions of their younger selves. For instance, that girl you knew back in high school who couldn’t bear to throw anything of sentimental value away. Fast forward to 30 or 40 years from now and she’ll probably have piles of junk — receipts from 1990, bundles of old letters and Christmas cards from family and friends dated back 1985 and boxes of unsorted yellowed paper and photos.

I’m observing my own parents and possibly viewing my future. They’ve become grouchier, more temperamental and moody, overly sensitive, and even a bit more eccentric, as older people tend to become. My mom’s mother, for instance, had the driest, most sarcastic sense of humor of anyone I’ve ever known. Other people seemed to find her hilarious but when she was around I used to hide so I wouldn’t see who she’d fodder for her entertainment. Of course now, I regret that I only spent a few years with her, but that’s a story for another day . So now I’ve realized mom is the same way grandma was; in fact, one time Papa told her, “That’s what you get for that sense of humor of yours!” when Mama cracked a joke that didn’t go over well, or at least as she had expected or hoped.

I can see a little bit of both Mama and Papa in me, both the good and not-so-good. A decade ago I was seeing a therapist and one day the clouds suddenly lifted and the skies cleared, shone brightly and so blue when she said that it appeared I was trying to correct my parents’ mistakes by committing the same ones and then trying to resolve them. I think that was the last appointment I ever made; there was nothing else she could have said that would have been more helpful to me.

But I’m also very different from my parents, even if I probably would have been better off if I were more similar in certain aspects (it would have been great if I had been born with my mother’s killer legs, but my younger sister - Anna, alas, was the lucky one). What I suppose this means is that I can look at them and either see my future or what could have been, but that in the end it all depends on the choices I start making now.

Either way it goes, I know that ultimately I have my parents to thank for the fact I have these choices today, whether or not I have nature or nurture on my side. The rest is up to me. And dear God (if you’re there) I hope I never become grouchy.

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