Getting Older: Why I Sometimes Like Disappearing
There comes a point in life when you realise you have changed.
I don’t mean the obvious things. The face looking back from the mirror has been quietly keeping records for years. Skin changes. Hair changes. Bits that once remained where nature originally placed them begin negotiating alternative arrangements. I can accept most of that with reasonable grace. On a good day.
I mean the changes that are harder to see.
I used to need more contact with people I loved. A phone call. A conversation. Knowing what everyone was doing. Hearing their voices regularly. There was reassurance in connection, and I probably measured closeness by it more than I realised.
These days, I can disappear into a book, an idea or a piece of research for hours. Give me a philosophical question and a cup of coffee and there is every chance somebody will eventually have to remind me that other human beings exist.
And I am increasingly comfortable with that.
For a while, I wondered whether this meant I was becoming detached. Then I wondered whether I was becoming selfish. Then, because apparently one existential crisis is never enough, I wondered whether I had changed into somebody entirely different.
And then I started wondering about hormones.
Getting Older Changes What We Need
We tend to talk about hormones as though they belong primarily to adolescence.
Teenagers get hormones. Pregnant women get hormones. Everyone else is apparently expected to behave themselves.
Except hormones accompany us throughout life, and the hormonal changes surrounding menopause affect considerably more than whether we have hot flushes or periods.
Oestrogen interacts with systems throughout the body, including the brain. As levels change through menopause, some women notice changes in concentration, memory, sleep and mood. There is even a familiar name for some of it: brain fog.
That moment when you walk purposefully into a room and then stand there wondering why you came?
There may be biology involved.
Although in my case, there is also a reasonable possibility that I became distracted by something interesting on the way.
Our skin changes too. Oestrogen has a role in hydration, elasticity and the structure of skin, so declining levels can contribute to dryness, thinning and changes in elasticity.
Apparently my skin has hormones as well.
Nobody mentioned this when I was twenty.
At twenty, moisturiser seemed to be something you applied because the bottle smelled nice. At sixty, you begin reading the ingredients as though you are conducting laboratory research. Meanwhile, my teenage granddaughter appears to know more about skincare than I managed to learn in the previous six decades. I’m beginning to suspect I should have been taking notes.
But the physical changes are only part of what interests me.
I wonder what happens to the person living inside all of this.
There are biological changes, but there are also decades of accumulated experience.
By sixty, you have loved people, disappointed people and been disappointed yourself. You have apologised. Forgiven. Worried. Tried too hard. Said too much. Said too little. Misunderstood people and been misunderstood by them.
You have probably spent a considerable portion of your life wondering whether everybody else is all right.
Relationships change alongside us too. Families grow, children become adults, grandchildren arrive, friendships shift, and the people who once occupied enormous parts of our everyday lives may eventually occupy different spaces within them. Sometimes that happens through circumstance, sometimes through changing family dynamics, and sometimes because everyone involved has simply grown into a different version of themselves.
Navigating those changes can be uncomfortable, especially when we expect relationships to remain as they once were. Getting older also means learning that love can change its shape without disappearing, and that allowing one another a little more space can be part of loving people too.
I have also become more aware of the way we speak to one another.
Conversations are hard enough in person, and messages can be even harder because tone so easily disappears somewhere between the sender and the screen. There is a world of difference between opening a conversation and delivering something that feels like a judgement.
I wish we saw more of you invites someone closer.
I’m disappointed in you can leave them feeling as though a verdict has already been handed down.
At this age, I have less appetite for verdicts and much more appreciation for conversations.
We don’t love people less as we grow older.
What can change is the need to continually prove that love through our physical presence.
I have come to believe that I love you can mean just as much spoken over the phone, written in a message or quietly carried in our thoughts as it does when we are sitting together in the same room. Of course, there are times when nothing replaces being there - the hug, the shared coffee, the laughter that happens only when people are together. But love isn’t measured solely in visits, phone calls or how often we see one another.
There was a time when frequent contact represented closeness to me. Now I can go days or weeks without speaking to somebody and still care enormously about what happens to them.
Love has stopped requiring quite so much administration.
I rather like that.
That is another thing age has taught me. Love doesn’t disappear into the spaces between us.
It is still there.
And, to be fair, the family probably appreciates the occasional break from motherly concern too. There are only so many times grown adults need to be reminded to drive safely, get enough sleep and let me know when they get home.
I’m simply learning that love doesn’t always need to announce itself quite so loudly.
The Strange Luxury of Solitude
Something else has happened as I have grown older.
I enjoy my own mind more.
That may be a dangerous admission from somebody who can turn a documentary about consciousness into three blog posts, a philosophical crisis and research for a novel before lunchtime.
But there it is.
I like disappearing for a while.
I like reading something that sends me looking for something else, which introduces another question, which leads to a philosopher who died two thousand years ago, who then ruins the rest of my morning, before wage work, because now I need to know what he thought.
From the outside, that may look like withdrawal.
From inside, it feels remarkably alive.
There is an important difference.
Sometimes we retreat because life has hurt us.
Other times we retreat because our inner world has finally become interesting enough to visit.
I think I understand that better now.
There is still a little guilt attached to enjoying solitude this much. Somewhere in the background is the persistent idea that I should be doing something else, seeing someone, calling someone or generally being a more socially productive human being.
But guilt is remarkably good at consuming the very time I was enjoying in the first place.
I am learning to let it go.
Because I am not withdrawing from the world because I have lost interest in it.
Quite the opposite.
I keep disappearing because I find the world endlessly interesting.
Am I Still the Same Woman?
Philosophers have been arguing about identity and change for a very long time.
It sounds like an abstract philosophical problem until you look at an old photograph of yourself.
There she is.
Your younger self.
Same person.
Except she thinks differently. Her body is different. Her priorities are different. She worries about things you no longer care about and probably hasn’t yet encountered some of the things that now matter deeply to you.
So which one is really you?
Both.
That is the strange thing about being human.
We expect ourselves to remain recognisable while spending an entire lifetime changing.
We can mistake consistency for proof of authenticity.
I don’t want everything at sixty that I wanted at thirty.
Thank goodness.
I would be rather concerned if several decades of living, reading, loving, losing, questioning and occasionally making an absolute mess of things had taught me nothing.
Age should change us.
Experience should change us.
And yes, biology changes us too.
There is wisdom in allowing ourselves to become the person emerging from all of it instead of continually apologising for no longer being the person everybody remembers.
That younger woman still belongs to me.
She just doesn’t get to make all the decisions anymore.
A Thought to Take With You
One of the quieter gifts of getting older is discovering that solitude doesn’t have to be lonely.
Sometimes disappearing for a while is exactly that - time to read, think, create, wonder and follow a question simply because it interests us.
There will always be people to love, relationships to nurture and emotions to navigate. They are part of the wonderfully complicated business of being human.
But there is room for ourselves in there too.
These days, I am increasingly happy to sit somewhere perfectly content, reading about consciousness, philosophy or quantum physics, wondering how on earth one interesting question managed to consume an entire afternoon.
I keep disappearing.
But I haven’t gone anywhere.
I may simply be discovering another version of myself.
Namaste
Deb xx
Thoughtful writing across life, mind, and meaning.
📚 READ WITH ME
Look After Your Feet
Rosalie Ham
After writing about getting older, changing relationships and my increasing appreciation for disappearing into my own thoughts, I went looking for someone else who had approached ageing with a little less solemnity.
I found Australian author Rosalie Ham and Look After Your Feet: Some Keen Observations on the Unexpected Advantages and Indignities of Getting Older.
I read a page.
I laughed.
That was enough. It has gone straight onto my reading list.
Ham looks at ageing, family, friendship, changing bodies and the unexpected advantages - and indignities - that come with getting older. It sounds like exactly the kind of company I want for this particular stage of life: thoughtful, observant and with a healthy sense of humour about the whole ridiculous business of being human.
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