Why Do I Feel So Old?

Turning 23 feels like turning thirty. 24 would feel like 40, and 25, 50. 60 it seems, is a time to go.

Perhaps you only feel this when you spend a Saturday night with a young crowd in Eastwood City with a younger brother. I never belonged to that dance-y crowd, even when I’m not even old. Perhaps this feeling is an inevitable tendency, when all you do is get old, long for the past, reconstructing your life by fantasizing about youthful memories that didn’t even happen.

One March morning when I just arrived home feeling weary from work, I was crossing our street on the way to the store to get breakfast. From the corner comes an old man: his hair all white, his skin burned by so many summers, his shoulders sunk in a small shoe-repair cart he is pushing. “Ben Shoe Repair” was sloppily painted on the box. He was an old Sisyhpus rolling his boulder up the mountain top. My father used to, and once in while, still has his shoes cleaned and shined by this old man. He must have been doing this longer than I even had memory.

He must have been so weary from his work. Today, he didn’t have enough air in his lungs when he tried to yell the trademark yell, “Sapatos.” I can’t even stare at him when my fucking eyeballs moistened with tears.

Now, what right did I have to feel so old?