When it comes to ageing, we all know we’re going to get a bit more wrinkly and sprout grey hairs, but (according to the internet) there’s so much more to the process than that.
The more experienced members of the Reddit community have been sharing the aspects of ageing they wish other people had warned them about.
From experiencing injuries in their youth which translated to health problems later in life to witnessing rogue hairs sprout from their faces, here’s what they had to say...
“That you can often prevent, but rarely go back. It applies to skin, joints, and many other issues.”
- Munninnu
“The part where all those broken bones, torn ligaments, injuries that never healed correctly, imperfect posture, terrible lift form all build up and then eventually explode as you get older.”
“That try as you may, you’re never fully prepared for your parents to get older. Somehow I still half expect my mom to be able to do certain things and it’s disheartening that she can’t. Even more so that she lacks the ambition and drive to do much.”
- kelli128
“Now that I can afford to eat anything I want and drink as much as I want, I can’t because it’s too unhealthy for me.”
“How fast time seems to start moving as you get older.”
- facedBoy
“My knees dying on me. I played a least one season of soccer from age four to 22, every year, and then some small leagues once I hit 24. Now sitting at 40 my right knee sounds like a bowl of Rice Krispies if I bend it just right.”
“The fact that I don’t feel older, it’s just that younger people seem even younger.”
“Your body is going to hurt for no reason at all sometimes.”
“The eyes. I wish I could have my younger eyes with no reading glasses. OH! And you know all of those metal concerts??? Tinnitus is a bitch!”
- Wizzmer
“Being ‘young’ in your head but your body not agreeing with you. I occasionally get depressed (nothing serious) about it. I used to be an avid runner and beach volleyball player. Now my body refuses to let me do either of them.”
“That hangovers are so much worse.”
“I’m only 28 but I wish someone would have said how important it is to stay limber. Just bending over in the morning I am so tight and stiff. Thank god it doesn’t hurt badly, yet, but I know that’s right around the corner. I’m trying to get into yoga and stretch every night before bed.”
- Eeeeels
“That grey/white head hair isn’t the same texture as the rest of your hair. They’re wiry like pubes.”
“31 is the new 13 - you’re gonna get pimples again and they’re gonna be hideous.”
“Teeth. Take care of your teeth because it’s painful and expensive work if you need your whole mouth worked on just because you didn’t brush your teeth twice a day.”
“Losing your hearing. I guess I was warned about it, but I had a desk job after college and I spent a decade with earbuds listening to music everyday while I worked.
“Now my hearing is fucked. I struggle discerning specific sounds in a crowded bar, to the point I don’t even try to converse with the people around me. Last summer I went to a concert and I brought ear plugs. A drunk chick in her early 20s near me made fun of the ear plugs. I couldn’t blame her - I would never have imagined a time in my life when I needed to wear ear plugs to a concert - but I knew I needed to protect my ears as best as possible.
“It will happen to all of you young ’uns - as you start into your 30s you will notice your hearing starts to get a bit more challenging.”
“Randomly growing hair on your chin/neck. One day you see this big black hair and try and brush if off... ‘oh’ you think, ‘it’s stuck’ so you try and pull it off, then you realise it’s GROWING OUT OF YOU!”
“Finding friends as an adult is really hard. You’re dumped into friends in your youth, because you spend so much time with this set of people in school, for several years. I was never particularly good at it then, but I have a hundred times the social skills now, and it is really damn difficult.
“If your coworkers don’t end up doing friendly things with you, you have to somehow, in between work, sleep, eating, and managing all of the other problems in this thread, go out intentionally to activities, repeatedly, trying to find people that don’t suck that also think you don’t suck, and then hope that your trying to become friends isn’t off-putting for them.
“You used to have eight hours a day at school to do this, now you have to cram it into one hour, twice a week.
“If you made good, valuable friendships in high school or college, hold onto them the best that you damn well can. Because replacing them is a daunting task.”