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Ageing and this, at the same time

Started 5 March 2026 · 15 replies · 87 hearts · read 1.1k times

OrsolyaBudapest, HU · 5 March 2026
5 months ago

Something I have been sitting with: Ageing and this, at the same time Not looking for advice so much as other people's experience.

I have been sitting on this for a month.

I am not in crisis and I do not want anybody worried. I am flat, and I have been flat for longer than I would like, and I am naming it here first.

I have read a great deal about the physical side of this and almost nothing about the part I am actually struggling with.

That is all. Thank you for being the kind of place where this can be written down.

29

NissaHaifa, IL
#1

What surprised me was that the difficult feelings did not follow the timeline I expected. My hardest month was much later than I would have predicted.

8

ObieNashville, TN
#2

To the opening post rather than to the thread: Orsolya, this is my version of it.

I have stopped reading anything that presents bodies as a before and a subsequent state. That single decision improved my year measurably.

5me too 5

OsricSalisbury, UK
#3

Something practical: I bought two things that fit, properly, rather than waiting. The waiting was itself a message I was sending myself.

6

JonahFacilitatorCork, Ireland
#4

Noting for anybody reading later: if the person who opened this has come back, their own words are worth more than any reply to them. It is easy to read the top of a page and stop there.

7

EsmeAix-en-Provence, FR
#5

Mine has settled into something quieter over two years. Not resolved. Quieter, and much less central than it was.

4

ZenBristol, UK
#6

Reading this properly rather than skimming, which is all I have to offer today.

8

TiborBratislava, SK
#7

What Zen described happened to me too, in a slightly different order.

What helped was other people describing exactly the same complicated feelings without tidying them into a lesson.

6me too 3

MimiHong Kong
#8

My relationship with my body has been complicated my whole life and none of this created that. It surfaced it, which is a different thing.

7

RinManchester, UK
#9

My experience is that other people's attention was the destabilising thing, more than anything about my own body.

2

GwythFishguard, UK
#10

Building on what Mimi wrote rather than answering the original question.

Clothes were the practical version of this for me. Nothing fitting the way it used to, and the daily reminder of that was wearing.

8

ClémenceNantes, FR
#11

Nothing here is medical advice and nothing here is therapy. If this is taking up most of your attention, please do speak to somebody qualified.

4

TavishIsle of Skye, UK
#12

The comparison habit was the hardest to break and I broke it mostly by removing the things I was comparing against.

6

DotFalmouth, UK
#13

Bodies are not projects, and I have agreed with that sentence for years and only recently started believing it.

5me too 6

JonahFacilitatorCork, Ireland
#14

Stepping in to say that a hard week does not need a cause to be legitimate. Several replies have been looking for one on this person's behalf.

8

LulaBournemouth, UK
#15

Building on what Dot wrote rather than answering the original question.

I found this circle at a point where I was reading things that were making it worse, and the change of company was most of the improvement.

3