WHAT ARE YOU MOST AFRAID OF?
March 14th 2007 02:19
A psychologist asked me this a few weeks back, and on that day, at that particular time the answer I gave was, "running out of money" that was obviously how I was feeling right then and there.
If you asked me today, "What are you most afraid of?" I would be more likely to say. "I am afraid of dying old and lonely". This is not to say that I am not scared of running out of money and not being able to meet my obligations in a financial sense, because I am indeed anxious of that, very anxious. The difference is today I have been sitting down and taking stock, and wondering about the hopefully distant future. Retirement, the golden twilight years, knitting socks in a rocking chair and all of that. Honestly, from where I sit, I don't feel like there is very much to look forward to. It makes me sad, to realise that the probability of my dying old and lonely is higher than the chance of winning lotto and being able to buy my self some company. I have surmised this mainly because at 43, almost 44, the lonely part is already true, the old bit is easy, all of us are getting older by the day, so the very thing that I am most afraid of is well on the way to becoming a self fulfilling prophecy.
I do have family and friends, but they are either older or close to the same age as me with varying degrees of failing health. I don't have any children, no younger generation to grow up as responsible, caring and obligated adults to keep me company and visit when I'm a little old lady. I guess my only visitors in the nursing home will be charitable strangers or members of church groups, or maybe nobody at all will ever visit, not even at Christmas or my birthday.
I try to be a practical self-reliant individual, but I cannot come up with a remedy for the malady of inevitable loneliness in old age. I did have a plan, to make a pact with my flatmate who is in a similar familial situation, that if we both find ourselves old and lonely in the autumn of our lives, we try to end up in the same nursing home together, and keep each other company, but I am not sure how to broach the subject without appearing morbid or needy or giving him the wrong idea about how I feel about him........
If you asked me today, "What are you most afraid of?" I would be more likely to say. "I am afraid of dying old and lonely". This is not to say that I am not scared of running out of money and not being able to meet my obligations in a financial sense, because I am indeed anxious of that, very anxious. The difference is today I have been sitting down and taking stock, and wondering about the hopefully distant future. Retirement, the golden twilight years, knitting socks in a rocking chair and all of that. Honestly, from where I sit, I don't feel like there is very much to look forward to. It makes me sad, to realise that the probability of my dying old and lonely is higher than the chance of winning lotto and being able to buy my self some company. I have surmised this mainly because at 43, almost 44, the lonely part is already true, the old bit is easy, all of us are getting older by the day, so the very thing that I am most afraid of is well on the way to becoming a self fulfilling prophecy.
I do have family and friends, but they are either older or close to the same age as me with varying degrees of failing health. I don't have any children, no younger generation to grow up as responsible, caring and obligated adults to keep me company and visit when I'm a little old lady. I guess my only visitors in the nursing home will be charitable strangers or members of church groups, or maybe nobody at all will ever visit, not even at Christmas or my birthday.
I try to be a practical self-reliant individual, but I cannot come up with a remedy for the malady of inevitable loneliness in old age. I did have a plan, to make a pact with my flatmate who is in a similar familial situation, that if we both find ourselves old and lonely in the autumn of our lives, we try to end up in the same nursing home together, and keep each other company, but I am not sure how to broach the subject without appearing morbid or needy or giving him the wrong idea about how I feel about him........
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