This is the inevitable thread for ILxors in their forties

are they? I wonder in what way they are putting up with worse shit.

this I suppose is kind of a drawback but also a safety cushion. I wouldn't want to kill myself because it would hurt my mum, but my mum was only 17 when she had me, so I have to put up with existence until she dies

that's going to take fucking years. but at least the rate it's going everyone I have every loved will be dead within a couple of years so fuck it anyway

I think the reason I was thinking about this and what is the actual point in continuing to live. I will be 45 this year. My life has been relentless misery and death since I was 39. Just wondering what a reasonable amount of years would be before I just go you know what, you win god, fuck you, fuck humanity, can I just go and party with Satan now?

is everyone's else's forties just endless misery, cancer and death, or is it just me? does this ever end?

― CP Radio Gorgeous (Colonel Poo), Friday, February 19, 2021 10:00 PM (one hour ago)

i feel like my 40s have had less misery than previous decades, a little bit more cancer and definitely more death ... and most likely the cancer and death stuff will increase in future decades.

my 40s are approaching their end, and i can think of essentially nothing to say about them other than that i've survived

i did at least raid daddino's series of 1971 mixes so as to make my own version

My 40s were fine. It's now, in my 50s, when the misery, death and cancer is kicking in.

I suppose now I've woken up the cancer and death can't actually increase because there will be no-one left in my life to die within a few years.

I should make some new friends so they can die too.

My 30s were a nightmare. I'm now 41-and-a-half. So far my 40s have shown themselves to be lonelier, sicklier, and happier

A person on twitter I am mutuals with has said he knows nearly 20 people who have died of covid, and has been unable to attend a single funeral in all that time.

My father died when I was 36, that marked the start of a psychological shift for me to thinking of life as a preparation for dying. Several aunts and an uncle lived to their 90s, I may have a long wait.

my 40s are approaching their end, and i can think of essentially nothing to say about them other than that i've survived

This
I hated my forties, I am a worse, weaker, more useless person coming out of them

i feel like a broken record here but -- when I was 42, there was a fire at a show that killed 36 people in my community, 6 of whom were friends of mine, and 35 of the 36 were younger than me. Only the "token old guy" was older than me. It gave me a major jab in terms of thinking long and hard about my assumptions and expectations about life, and what I should be doing with mine, and the various stages of life based on physical age.

I suppose now I've woken up the cancer and death can't actually increase because there will be no-one left in my life to die within a few years.

I should make some new friends so they can die too.

― CP Radio Gorgeous (Colonel Poo), Saturday, February 20, 2021 7:40 AM bookmarkflaglink

don't know the words to say other than "I'm so sorry" :(

I'm not saying I've done it, but it's necessary to come up with a perspective on life that includes rather than ignores the inevitability of death.

I should make some new friends so they can die too.

I can definitely relate to that ...

only a few months into my 40s, my brain feels like it has transitioned to knowing my freewheeling, do whatever I feel like days are over, and I have more confidence in my ability to do things for myself and others.

but after the latter half of my 30s, I'm hoping the only way to look is up. the first half of my 30s were amazing, second half were bits of light sprinkled amongst lots of despair that I papered over with traveling the country, drinking, and excess concert-going.

Hey, if anyone else who is not "eligible" to post in the no boys thread wants to confront me for having started a discussion about how non-cis-men tend to view their 40s as more positive than cis-men and how that was insensitive or potentially related to the shitty cancer and death context of Colonel Poo's post in this thread ... please do so here. I don't have to work today, and I will personally apologize to anyone who was hurt.

I'm not really looking for a confrontation, but will just note that it came dangerously close to implying that grief and depression are an unsightly symptom of being a 40-something cis het male. There may or may not be a gendered element to when or how people experience these things, but it feels a lot like trivializing people's pain and vulnerability to muse upon it while they are obviously hurting.

just to be clear I know people are talking about this and I want to say that yes I found the discussion insensitive and a bit hurtful, but I also recognised that it wasn't really about me. I am not wanting to confront anyone over this, frankly I'm embarrassed about the whole thing.

Ugh and I am super sorry about that. I was mostly responding to the posts that followed that seemed to speak more to general malaise. I didn't intend to trivialize anyone's pain. As a middle-aged white woman, I end up seeing/reading a lot of posts and articles by other middle-aged white women and there is a tendency to actually speak more positively about one's 40s vs. being younger, so I wanted to talk about how gender relates to that.

I can't speak to experiencing this manifestation of grief at this time--the most intense grief I've experienced wrt aging was in my early 30s when I felt I had a lifetime of love to give a partner and a child, and no partner and no child in my present or future. Ten years later I could have chosen differently but I felt that time had passed for me. I no longer wanted to give up my body and the next 20 years of my life to center around something that would need so much of everything from me.

But in my mid 40s that's behind me now and the grieving feels a bit distant and a lot of other things I was laboring under have disappeared? I haven't been street harassed in this decade, which is A MIRACLE. Or I guess on the rare occasions that I am, I feel fine giving the finger and keeping it moving. A facet of my personal growth that I really appreciate.

helped a friend move back and helped my mother around the house and I should not be as tired and sore as I am, lol. Icy Hot for the win.

Feeling time creeping up, the ever slowly closing window on changing the way things are, seeing that any hope of a “replacement” situation being anything else than completely fucked is slim , living in basement studio in a shit neighborhood with one small window, realizing I’m a social cancer entity, making contributions to the public artistic discourse like trying to shoot bats in cave while standing in twenty feet of guano slowly sinking

Coffee break's over!

I count my 40s mostly as a respite from AIDS, seeing so many of my friends die in my 30s was incredibly painful, it was by far the most traumatic experience of my life

I am 49 (turning 50 in three months). My forties were mostly pleasant. Solid marriage, beautiful and happy children, decent work, played lots of music.

The last year has been tumultuous as fuck. Covid and everything, challenges with younger disabled kid and elder kid working through gender/identity issues. Winter tends to pull me down normally, and this one has been especially bad.

Lately I keep waking up with dread. Or the blues. Or nausea. Or all three. By noon I feel better. But yeah, it's a slog.

I wish peace and strength to everyone.

I'm turning 50 in December. Married 27 years (28 in June). No kids. My forties have been pretty good — drifted from job to job, but never felt desperate or worried about the present or the future. I think I've become a much better writer in the last few years, and have finally "broken through" in that I see my work cited in articles and books now, which is a strange feeling. My 2020 was...mostly pretty good (wrote a book, started a record label, made some money) to the point that I sometimes feel weirdly guilty about not sharing the existential, doom-is-upon-us feelings that others here and elsewhere share regularly. I haven't really been worried about catching Covid; I work from home and take precautions, always wearing a mask when I'm outside my apartment and generally standing far away from other people (though TBH I always did that anyway). And I don't really miss being out in public in group/social situations. Even when I went to jazz clubs I mostly sat by myself in a corner and listened to the music; I wasn't there to drink or make conversation. My main worry is that my lack of exercise seems to be taking its toll. My back hurts a lot, almost all the time, and I fell down twice while out walking this past week and only one of those can be absolutely attributable to hitting a patch of ice on the sidewalk — the other one just felt like my legs went out and I toppled over for no reason. That's weird, and something I hope stops happening.

Yeah, I've been feeling my age (48) more than at any point in my life. I look very young for my age and still have almost no grey hair, but the pandemic, lack of exercise, aging friends and parents, all have me hearing the clock ticking in a way I haven't before.

Question: does having kids give you a connection to the next generation and feeling younger or make you feel your age and out of touch?

This might be slight regret at not having kids, but I've wondered if it is the former.

it definitely helps you zero in on exactly how out of touch you are ime

i mean sure i now know that london kids say “sheffed” for “knifed” and “cap” for “a lie” but it is more or less unusable knowledge for me

I would think at the least parents would absorb some knowledge of the latest apps/technology/music/etc. from their kids, though that could definitely work either way.

Maybe ignorance really is bliss, lol.

having kids definitely makes me feel my age, mostly because i'm constantly hearing myself sounding just like my dad (and hating myself for it)

Dunno, having kids (in their twenties now) makes me feel I'm not as old as I actually am.

I'm in no rush to don a flat cap, wear tweed and have a long beard like people twenty years younger than me, put it that way.

I'd guess having kids gives you a keener sense of time passing and life changing. 5 years is a whole period of growth and change to observe in your kids. Whereas for me life's pretty similar to what it was 5 years ago with no such obvious indicators of change.

no cap, this thread is a shef in the guts

Anyway, there does not seem to be a 'fifties' thread, and even if there was, I'd only have two weeks to be there. So, lol.

Dunno, having kids (in their twenties now) makes me feel I'm not as old as I actually am.

I'm 47 and my youngest is not yet 2, I suspect by the time they're in they're twenties - or even teenagers - I'm going to be feeling pretty old by comparison.

Wonder if 'sheffed' comes from shiv, or chef's knife, or something more recondite.

Wel, I'd have thought so too, but it's not inevitable. Xpost

I think there is one! I remember posting in it. I think Jaq has as well? But I can't find it.

Guessing “sheffed” is a corruption of “shivved” though as I type that it occurs to me that “sheffed” may be a reference to Sheffield steel and so maybe sheffed is the older form? Certainly I’ve been hearing / reading shivved for years but sheffed is new to me.

I can say with happy certainty that I’m further out of touch than Tracer is.

That was an xpost, couldn’t imagine anyone else was musing on this, should’ve known Ledge would be.

Shiv: “probably from Romani chiv ‘blade’.” Says the internet.

Cheffed: "British slang to describe someone getting [shanked] or [knifed]. Typically used by [roadmen]."

https://definedictionarymeaning.com/topic/99302/cheffed

i.e. getting chopped up by a knife

lol a Roadman sounds like a description of an Irish construction worker from the 60's working as one of McAlpine's Fusiliers to me, but apparently it means someone who hangs out (not to be confused with hanging out washing) on the streets and stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qTY0u6Cujw
zone 2 - who you cheffed?

lyrics here: https://l-hit.com/en/1611459

"how many times have i went for my waist and they ran even though mans lacking
Aim it back then i swear i gotta tap it
Could never be me that don't bang it
Ruth who you cheffed?
Ned who you cheffed? (ned who you cheffed?)
Loose who you cheffed?
Let me not even start about kev
Your-your big man doing up gang
Incog who have you cheffed?
All these guys just rap like you ain't made non of us bled
Give a fuck what you think
Wanted to stop when it got too ten
Let me just state some names before we say they ain't got any friends
Loose got chinged up three times
Lb hold a bass
Ned got knocked out two times
Rhino got it in his face (rhino got it in his face)
Tizzy got opened wide
Ayy, rampz he already went swimming
Os, ny, tiny got it all for free who wants the ticket
Tsplash with his auntie
Femz at a party
They don't score no parks g"

Ned's got some explaining to do

turned 41 recently, though i keep forgetting that i'm 41 because pandemic birthdays don't seem real. so far it's been...okay? without getting too personal, i'm coming out the other end from some existential am i going to have kids or not? stuff that i do think, for women who want to have kids, makes the 40s a different decade than for men (kind of the decade following a reckoning of sorts). (obviously, that is a generalization that pretends gender is more binary than it is.) i have been very lucky when it comes to death and disease among the people i love, and people itt who have experienced that kind of loss, i'm so sorry.

much more trivially, i find the stuff in the cultural ether about women in their 40s irritating--in my circle of female friends who live near me (all of whom are younger than me lol) there's a lot of Cathy cartoon-style bemoaning growing older, and maybe i'm just a case of arrested development, but i don't identify. i guess i'm in worse physical shape than i used to be, but duh. my late 30s and early 40s saw me become financially stable (as much as possible in this accursed economy) in a way that still feels like a bit of a trip (and was dependent on getting married, honestly, which is shitty), but i do think it's made life less stressful. on the other hand, political/global stuff is terrifying--i feel like my 40s so far have been characterized by a weird cognitive dissonance--a realization that i have become a part of the bourgeoisie, with bourgeois habits (i always had those, though, just less money), who nonetheless has been radicalized by how terribly entrenched wealth inequality and economic exploitation are in this country. i feel dread about how precarious basically everyone's life feels right now (except, like, three uber-rich people), but that doesn't seem like it's necessarily about being in my 40s, just about where the world is as i happen to be in my 40s.

also i feel like i was never particularly adventurous in my aspirations for my life, so the fact that i'm 41 and there's a pandemic, so i spend Friday nights reading in a comfortable chair is fine by me.

Question: does having kids give you a connection to the next generation and feeling younger or make you feel your age and out of touch?

Yes.