Message to the young

If you survive your impetuous youth, to reach my age, you'll have all of the following to look forward to and more (Old age doesn't come empty handed as they say in Scotland): Indigestion, heartburn, piles and a bladder that controls you - not you, it. You'll cut and bruise easily too. Your teeth will be sensitive to both hot and cold things equally. Chewing hard stuff? Just a memory of stamina you've no longer got. Your eyes will run at the least sign of cold weather, until you drown in your tears and your nose may follow suit. Oh yes, you cocky little bastards - no more bare arms and t-shirts in the pouring rain or falling snow flakes. As Leonard Cohen sang 'You'll be aching in the places, where you used to play.' One day the wrinkled bag between your legs, will be caught up by the rest of your body and you'll be a dried and crinkly old prune all over.

I hate the lot of you, with your smooth skin and pimply faces. Your ability to run and play in a way now lost to me forever, gets right up my nose but one day I'll have my revenge, if you don't kill yourself first. Old age is the only prejudice that can be guaranteed to catch up with you. The shoe invariably and inevitably fits on the other foot. That cannot be said about race, sex, sexual persuasion or class. We all grow old and one day you'll be laughing on the other side of your face, when the insults you sent out to us, return to haunt you, 'grandpa!'

That poor lad shot in the head at point blank range in Salford recently and that boy stabbed through the heart, crossing a bridge in London a few years back - total strangers, killed for no good reason. They could have grown up to be worth something to society, murdered by jealous scum who were no good to anyone. All you lot talk of is respect, yet you show us none and scant little to anyone else, including yourselves. When you reach my age, who'll look after you because your kids won't. Like you abusing us in care homes now, this is also something for you to look forward to.

I wish you all the corns, callouses and ingrowing toenails I have. All the bad breath and rotten teeth too. The arthritis, the rheumatism, failing eyesight and all the other general aches and pains that come from getting older. The permanently gunged up eyes, ears and nose. The dribbling at both ends (The erectile dysfunction especially, I wish you well with). The veins showing through your thinning and blotched skin - welcome to the real horror of old age! The juddering when drinking, the lack of stamina that leaves you leaning on a wall, on the way home. The deafness, the memory loss, the perpetual dry throat - the old person's smell that hits you, when you reach a certain age (Everything stinks in a different way from that point on). The shakes, the loss of balance as bodily rhythms throw you all over the place, where once you controlled them, right down to the smallest movement.

All your vain wallowing in pride about your appearance - where will that be, when the hair on your head turns grey or falls out and what's up your nose, in your ears and on your eyebrows, turns into a dense thicket? What will you do, when your body turns into a bag of fat or just skin, stretched over bone? 

All those smooth skinned, lithe young bodies, having no blemishes except for temporary acne - I envy you! My revenge is knowing that one day you'll end up just like me - old and falling to bits at the seams. All the 'pleasures' you enjoy now, one day will be gone. Sugar will set your teeth on edge, bread will give you heartburn, fat will make you want to throw up. All of life's victories you can say goodbye to because they will simply make you too ill, to enjoy them anymore - the sex, the drink, the cigarettes. All because you've become too sensitive to sensations, to put up with them anymore (Too bright, too noisy, too smelly, too strong tasting). The first half of your life, you're indefatigable - the second, crushed to death by your experiences. The good memories disappear and the bad ones resurface. Do I have a poor memory in reality? No, I just don't want to remember the past anymore or experience the present and as for the future... I've lost all my appetite for life and just want to die. I've watched family and friends go before me and now I'm dead inside too, just waiting for my body to catch up and release me from this living hell of daily life.

I remember how it used to be with my wife and me. We stood together against the gathering storm but now we've fallen apart. We can barely talk to each other. We go through the sham of a happy marriage, like nearly everyone else we know because that is what is expected of you. I remember when we first met and fell in love. We were two strangers, who opened up and trusted each other. The barriers between us dissolved and like blocks of ice, melting into running water, we flowed into one another. Finally finding a mirror of ourselves, we blossomed into one being and abandoned the lies and subterfuge of the world around us. Now the agreed upon barriers have been reforged. We do not let passion push us beyond this. We never meet in no-man's land anymore. Our 'relationship' is constant and consciously maintained because it can never be anything but distant from now on. Love is dead. Mutual exploration is dead. We are dead.

We no longer fight or struggle for understanding but have drifted away from each other. We are polite across the cold spaces between us, going through the senseless formalities but that is all. To outsiders living their own cold, dead lives, we are 'still' in love but robots know the truth, minds know the truth - hearts though won't accept it and die for their treason to hard facts.

Yes, you have all this emotional hell to look forward to and I wouldn't wish it on anybody, not even you - the death of love, the death of friendship, in a crumbling world where we throw ourselves into tasks, to avoid facing this loneliness, this emptiness, we cal our 'lives.' We are battlefield casualties of a war we slid into - one we never consciously chose. Wrecks of yesterday - mind staring at mind, broken heart at broken heart, unwilling to face the pain inside. We pretend that all is 'normal' and act as though it were, in the vain hope it will be again but knowing different in reality.

               Shut me in my box

               Keep me safe and warm.

               Shut me in my box

               Save me from the storm.