The Arithmetic of Aging Doesn't Add Up

When my body turned 50, my brain apparently missed the memo.

Someone should have warned me that getting older means becoming a walking contradiction. The mirror insists I've accumulated five decades of existence while my internal monologue still sounds like I'm negotiating curfew with my parents. My knees creak when I stand up from the couch, but my sense of humor hasn't matured past freshman year dormitory banter.

The math isn't mathing.

Society operates under this bizarre assumption that chronological age corresponds with intellectual development, emotional maturity, and general life competence. We celebrate milestone birthdays as if the rotation of Earth around the Sun automatically downloads wisdom into our cerebral cortex. Newsflash: it doesn't. Time passes. Bodies deteriorate. Hair grays. Metabolism slows to a crawl that would embarrass a sloth. None of this guarantees actual growth.

I've spent half a century on this planet, yet I still laugh at the same stupid jokes that cracked me up in high school. My cultural references skew toward whatever teenagers are streaming. When my kids roll their eyes at my attempts to use current slang, I genuinely don't understand why they find it embarrassing. The disconnect between my physical vessel and my psychological reality grows wider every year.

I'm literally in my señora era. I own a favorite apron that I get genuinely upset about when someone else uses it. I have a designated side of the bed and will fight you over it. I clip coupons with the dedication of a forensic accountant and wear prescription glasses that I bought at Costco because vision insurance is a scam. I am a Doña in all my glory, belting out "Chicas de Hoy" by Tatiana on my way to buy store brand coffee at HEB.

But my youth still clings for dear life. It whispers that crop tops remain a viable wardrobe option despite what society suggests about age-appropriate attire. It tells me to go braless because underwire feels like a medieval torture device and comfort trumps convention. The same woman who obsesses over double coupon days also refuses to accept that certain fashion choices have supposed expiration dates.

The body keeps score even when the mind refuses to participate in the aging process. My skin wrinkles in places I didn't know skin could wrinkle. My joints protest movements that used to require zero conscious thought. Sleep becomes this elusive luxury instead of an automatic biological function. Meanwhile, my interior monologue maintains the same energy level I had at 25, making plans and setting goals as if this meat suit I'm piloting isn't actively falling apart.

Time functions as the ultimate betrayal. We're told that accumulating years means accumulating experience, knowledge, and perspective. The reality involves accumulating medical appointments and an alarming familiarity with orthopedic specialists. Age confers no automatic elevation in consciousness or sophistication. Plenty of people hit 80 without developing emotional intelligence beyond adolescence. The calendar advances regardless of whether we evolve alongside it.

I've attended enough funerals to understand mortality on an intellectual level. I've made enough poor decisions to theoretically have learned valuable lessons. I've watched enough political cycles to recognize patterns in human behavior and institutional failure. None of this translates into feeling old. The sensation of youth persists despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. My brain insists we're still in our prime even as my lower back stages a revolt against basic physical activity.

The pharmaceutical industry profits enormously from this cognitive dissonance. Anti-aging creams promise to reconcile the gap between how old we look and how young we feel. Supplements claim to restore vitality that time has stolen. The entire wellness industrial complex exists because nobody wants to accept that their expiration date approaches while their sense of self remains frozen in perceived youth.

Maybe age really is just a number, an arbitrary measurement that fails to capture the complexity of human development. Maybe we've constructed this elaborate social framework around chronological aging that bears little relationship to actual psychological or intellectual maturity. Maybe the disconnect I experience between my physical age and my mental age isn't an anomaly but rather the universal human condition that nobody wants to acknowledge out loud.

Every morning I wake up feeling like I'm hitting my stride just as my body reminds me that stride peaks happened decades ago. The dissonance never resolves. My bones creak. My skin sags. My energy depletes faster than it replenishes. Through it all, I remain convinced that my best years stretch ahead of me, that whatever peak performance means will arrive any day now, that 50 represents the beginning rather than the slow decline toward the end.

My body knows what my mind doesn't comprehend.

@Santitos

@salinasmariasantos

Copyright © 2025 Maria Santos Salinas for FRONTeras.