As I Get Older, I Realise I Will Never Not Hurt Again

This is How I Imagine Beach Walks Would Be When Your Whole Body Doesn't Hurt

Listen guys, everything hurts as you get older. I know a lot of you relate to this particular subject. But for those who don’t, the hurting is not in the wincing agony of a cramp (although you do have more of those) or the searing pain of a toothache. It’s more of a pervasive dull ache, with accents of sharp surprise.

You will know what I mean when you get there. Some days, everything is tickity boo. Your neck aches a bit and that pesky left knee creaks a bit going up the stairs. But aside from that – it’s all good. This is a banner situation. You quietly note this experience and congratulate yourself for being fit and in shape.

Everything Hurts When You Get Older - Some Days it's the Back, Other Days it's the Ankles

But for the rest of the time, every day could potentially bring a new discovery of pain. Some days you wake up and your back just doesn’t want to straighten for the first 5 minutes. Or your ankles are non-functional and when you try and first-walk like a normal person, you only accomplish that familiar jerk-shuffle of the feet that you saw your father do when you were last at home. It’s always on the way to the loo. When jerk-shuffling is a hair too slow for what you need to do.

Some days start well, and then you try and scratch an itch on your back only to send your shoulder into some weird spasm that you can’t quite get out of. Or you take a lovely walk on the beach, dodge out of the way of a high wave, and two months later your Achilles heel hasn’t quite ‘come right’.

Beach Walks in my Teens and Twenties with Gilly, Philly and Fritha - Fun and "Let's Create an Album Cover"

This is my reality. I have loved a beach walk as long as I have been alive - I especially love a beach walk in winter, if I am very honest. When I was 18, beach walks were hilarious and often drunken. In my twenties, they were a lot more moody and existential. My forties needed a strong coffee, an early morning and a plastic bag for collecting other people's rubbish. Time passes. Things change. But when you can't go for a beach walk because everything hurts, well that's too much.

Beach Walks Now Involve a Coffee, Early Morning Sun Only, Planning and a Warm Up

I don’t know that there is a solution to this – in fact I have non-medicated rheumatoid arthritis that seems to stay in a somewhat crouched, low-grade seething-hatred position – not bad enough to take the shitty meds, but not good enough to ignore. So I do know this is probably only going to get gradually worse.

So much so that I’m starting to believe my dad when he says, “my girl, growing old is not for the timid or the weak. You’ll be glad of those working-class cankles I gave you when you get to my age.” I mean, he’s not wrong.