44: The Year I Realized I Wasn’t a Twenty-Something Anymore

There’s a kind of grief in missing a world that no longer exists… and knowing it never will again.

Some mornings, I wake up and still feel like I’m in my twenties. My mind is sharp. Curious. Hopeful. I still dream. I still have ideas that make my heart race a little. I still want to build something meaningful. But then my body reminds me—quietly and cruelly—that I’m not twenty anymore. My knees ache. My spine protests. My energy takes longer to gather. I stretch before I even stand. And I find myself whispering, “When did this happen?”

Forty-four came fast. Faster than I ever thought it would. I blinked, and decades disappeared. The memories play on loop—first jobs, first apartments, young love, heartbreak, hope, loss, laughter that made my stomach hurt. Half a life, just… gone. And now I sit with the uneasy awareness that there may not be another forty-four ahead of me. Or maybe there will be—but what will they look like? What will I look like in them? What parts of me will still be here? The not knowing—the lack of control over what’s to come—is louder than ever.

Especially for someone like me. Someone who has always needed structure, who feels safest when there’s a plan, a sense of control over her surroundings. The future is a vast, dark space I can’t organize, fix, or prepare for. And that uncertainty—it claws at me.

Lately, I find myself reaching for the past more than I used to. Not just for smoother skin or a stronger body—but for the world I once knew. One where people said pleaseand thank you, where kindness wasn’t a personality trait but a standard. Where disagreements didn’t mean disrespect. Where the need for validation didn’t outweigh the desire to do the right thing. I miss when we helped each other just because it was the decent thing to do—not because there was an audience.

I’m from the FAFO generation. The generation that said what we meant and stood by it. A generation of values, morals, and integrity. We believed in doing the right thing—even when no one was watching. We’d give you the shirt off our backs without hesitation. We were raised on yes ma’ams and no sirs, on respecting our elders, on holding the door for strangers, and meaning it when we said thank you.

But we were also raised to call things what they are. To take accountability for our words and actions—and expect others to do the same. We didn’t hide behind screens. We didn’t fake kindness for likes. We said what needed to be said, even when it was hard, because we believed in truth over comfort.

Now, I watch the world shifting fast, morphing into something that feels unfamiliar and often, deeply unkind. I see people take pride in cruelty. I see performative outrage, manufactured perfection, and a strange hunger for conflict. I see intolerance growing louder than understanding. I see values I once believed to be universal now dismissed as outdated or naive.

And I wonder where that leaves people like me.

Because the truth is—I never really felt like I fit in to begin with. But now, it feels less like not fitting in, and more like being left behind. Like the space I used to quietly exist in is shrinking. Like I’m becoming a relic—someone who still believes in professionalism, humility, respect, and personal responsibility. Someone who still thinks maturity isn’t something to mock. Someone who still tries to live gently, even in a world that seems to reward sharp edges.

I don’t have a resolution for any of this. I don’t know what it means to grow older in a world that feels like it’s moving further from everything that once felt safe or right. I don’t know how to make peace with a future I can’t predict. And I don’t know how to keep belonging in a place that feels more foreign with each passing year.

But I do know I’m not alone.

And maybe that’s the point of sharing this at all—not to wrap it in a bow or end on a hopeful note, but to say the quiet part out loud. To hold space for the ache of becoming older in a world you barely recognize. To admit that sometimes, it’s heavy.

And to let that be enough.