10 Reasons Why I Feel Old At 24...

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I don’t know if it’s just me but I really feel old. However, I don’t find my age being the problem I don’t believe somebody is old at my age, but everything around me makes me feel constantly old. I felt slightly old at 23 but 24 is really making me feel depressed.

1 – The media portrays a lot of young people - The first reason why I feel old is the fact that all the ads in the magazines seem to portray these beautiful 19-20 year old women with the skin of a 9 year old. I’m never going to be 19, 20 or 9 year old anytime soon so I feel kind of ancient.Apparently nowadays being 10 is the new 17 which makes it really hard for me to cope with the reality of my age. 

2- People are getting married around me - A lot of people my age are starting to get married which again makes me think that I am pretty old. A lot of my ex school/high school/college acquaintances are already married, some of them even have kids so that makes it a little hard for me to actually believe that I am still young and fresh and I can do whatever I want….which brings me to my next point.

3 – I can’t do whatever I want – I’ve been hearing myself a lot lately saying “Oh, I’m too old to do this”, “This is not appropriate for my age” which again makes the life at 24 even more miserable.

4 – Everybody is younger – more than 60% of the people I meet are younger than me and I really hate that. I hate you young people!!!! Just kidding, but seriously, am I in the wrong circles? Even if I hang out with older people I feel old, because, you know, I hang out with older people! People my age are too busy getting married so….I’m doomed. 

5- Critical – I often find myself criticizing the young generation which makes me sound like grandparents trying to cope with the idea of gay marriage. The young generation is annoying, they have so much time to waste I really hate them.

6 – I don’t have time to play videogames - I remember staying in my room for days and just play videogames until I felt like my eyes were bleeding. Now, I have deadlines, I have to sleep, I can’t just play videogames all day.

7 – I don’t live with my parents anymore – This is both positive and negative but whenever I go home I remember how good it is to have absolutely no responsibilities. I love to not care about my rent, my bills, whoever rings at the door, shopping, etc.

8 – I have a lot of old people type of conversations – if you are like me you know what I’m talking about. The type of conversations with a friend that start with “Have you seen the gas prices lately?” and end up with “I don’t know what’s happening to this country, it used to be much better in the past”. Same applies for other topics like: today’s young people, today’s music, today’s movies, etc. I often find myself and my friend discussing about stuff like this and how things are not how they used to.

9 – I don’t enjoy being crazy anymore – I don’t really want to go wild, drink all night, get male strippers and have fun with my girlfriends until we pass out near the bed. I’d rather watch a movie and drink some wine or read a book. I’m even starting to hate loud music. I always get hysterical when my flat mate listens to loud music and what’s sad about it is the fact that I use the same words as my grandma “Turn that music down, what are the neighbors going to think??? Listening to music at 3 am in the morning is not appropriate!!!” and then I walk away feeling him giving me that “u crazy woman!” look. Hmm, apparently I am crazy but not young and fun crazy, old crazy woman crazy.

10 – I can’t be myself. This works both ways, I can’t have the old woman habits that I mentioned earlier but I can’t be crazy either. Society has this thing and it makes you feel bad for being anything. There are a few exceptions, like being a famous star or the CEO of a major company. Well, I can’t be a famous star because I’m too old and I’m also too young to be a CEO. Anyway, it’s this demand to be something when you reach a certain age that makes me furious. How people start judging you because you are not like they want you to be. Some will judge you for being to immature while others will be annoyed by the fact that you seem too mature for your age. And I get both these reactions, which makes me confused.

I guess the society wants me to feel old, this way I’ll settle. I am not allowed to be crazy at this age, I can’t be wild, everything I am allowed to do is focus on my job; also, I have to buy new things all the time to keep the economy smooth. Society wants you to be old, but you have to look young so that you can inspire other young people to be old.  

PS: When I will be 34 I will look at this post, smile and say "Oh 24 year old me, how silly you were!"

Retired Husband Syndrome - A woman's full time job

Retired husband syndrome is a psychosomatic stress related illness that occurs in Japan.  This illness seems to affect women of ages 50 to 65 as soon as their husbands reach retirement. It is also one of the causes for divorce in Japan among older couples.

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With a husband that is mostly busy at work, the Japanese woman has a lot of time on her hands and becomes dependent on certain activities. He might start complaining about different things but the wife will tolerate such behavior as she knows his presence at home is short. However, when husbands retire, their whole personality is revealed and they can become too irritating for their wives, who are used to spending their free time away from them. Also, a lot of Japanese husbands help little around the house and having one who stays at home all the time means more cleaning.

A woman declares that her husband takes over her domicile and wants to cook or direct the way she cooks; he either leaves a lot of dishes or he fries everything too much.

The cracking of eggs is something else. Crushing them with his hands (as presumably he has seen some chef do it) always results in picking out egg shell from the food while we attempt to eat it, or throwing the whole dammed thing away.

Women begin to show a pattern of symptoms and this led Dr. Nobuo Kirokawa to identify and coin the term retired husband syndrome. The symptoms are: depression, skin rash, asthma, ulcers, and high blood pressure.

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We should understand that Japanese society demands that the husband does well in his career so he spends little time with his wife and kids. They will also have a hard time interacting after he is retired because they are not used with that level of social intimacy. Men socialize with the work colleagues and women with their friends, so their activities together are very few.

It seems that almost 60% of the wives of retired men suffer from retired husband syndrome. There are also support groups that help Japanese men to be independent, stop demanding so much from their wives and communicate with them.

Serotonin

Serotonin is a neurotransmitter linked to depression, especially medium or mild intensity depression. Serotonin levels drop during depression, so most antidepressants are build in the most selective manner. There are pills that react with presynaptic 5 HT 1A receptors.  They prevent the reuptake of serotonin by the presynaptic neuron, thus maintaining higher levels of 5-HT in the synapse. SSRI treatment (Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) is the first step in depression treatment. Here we have: Fluoxetine (our classic Prozac), Sertaline (Zoloft, another classic), Paroxetine, Fluvoxamine and Citalopram. Other medication reacts with postsynaptic receptors, and others on both groups. Their success is influenced by how they managed to increase the serotonin levels necessary for nerve impulse.

Serotonin and types of depression

When it comes to depression, the type that starts with low serotonin levels is an anxious depression with psychomotor agitation, frequent crying, irritability, irascibility, and a patient that will still struggle to get out of this state. There is no pathology at the cognitive level (perhaps some attention and concentration difficulties).

When we discuss about major depression, we must add that it is associated, besides low serotonin levels, with low noradrenaline levels. Some of the symptoms are: psychomotor inhibition, severe cognitive deficiencies, weight loss, oversleeping, even athymhormia.

Psychotic depression (appears in 15% of people who suffer from major depression). Symptoms include: auditory and visual hallucinations and delusional thinking (mood congruent delusions like paranoid delusions, delusions of guilt, delusions of persecution), thoughts of death, etc. As for neurotransmitters, besides serotonin and noradrenaline issues, there is a high increase of dopamine, which can be treated with narcoleptics or typical antipsychotics.

More on serotonin:

http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Serotonin

http://www.helpguide.org/mental/depression_signs_types_diagnosis_treatment.htm

Picture taken from here.