The Opiate, Fall Vol. 15
I Will Not Talk About Resilience. I Will Not. Olivia Fenn
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lderly people. They depress me. Yes—they’re lovely and polite and chivalrous and (let’s face it) a little racist—but they are damn depressing. What with their hunched backs, dribble falling down their chin, bad breath, backward ideals, chicken legs and a laugh that rings out for a little too long. It’s all too much for me. They used to be beautiful. Where is their vitality? Youthful exuberance? Lust for life? Does that all go when we reach eighty years old? Do we trade in our perky boobs and straight posture for a bit of dribble and a walking stick? Nothing, I think, is more depressing. Still, I watched her. The old woman. Over by the street sign. Meandering along. Walking at a glacial pace. Looking like a decomposing corpse with cheap, red lipstick. Poor thing, I muttered, wondering what she was like before the
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wrinkles, and the faded grey hair, and the yellow-stained teeth. Perhaps she was a dancer. Or a gymnast. Or someone with a large fossil collection and an obsession with archaeology, digging up remains and touching old, decaying bodies. Why, she could have been anyone! A pilot! A firefighter! An artist! A dog walker! A murderer. A mother. A nutter. A lover. And, all that potential, all that life, all those memories, all that time—gone! Poof ! Invisible to the human eye. Gets me thinking that perhaps my first therapist was right. “Annie,” she’d said, her voice low and menacing. “Your addiction is the same as your affliction.” Thought it sounded like a bunch of spooky tosh back then—made to sound shrewd and wise because of the alliteration and the slant-rhyme. Now, I suppose, I see her point. Staring at the old-woman (feeling sick with sadness), not even blinking once (feeling sick with sadness)—thinking, why can’t I stop staring?
