Forty-Eight

Learning how to live inside a body that no longer lies

I am forty-eight years old, and I don’t always know how to hold what that means.

Some mornings I wake up and my body feels like it’s already been out there without me — like it made decisions overnight that I wasn’t invited to. I stand more carefully now. I check in before I move.

Not out of fear.
Out of experience.

I used to trust my body without thinking about it. That kind of trust doesn’t break loudly. It disappears quietly, and you don’t notice it’s gone until you reach for it and it isn’t there.

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I live with a disease that doesn’t announce itself to the world. There’s no clean moment where you can point and say this is when things changed. It just keeps changing things while you’re busy trying to keep your footing — literally and otherwise.

What’s harder than the physical part is the translation.

Trying to explain to people that you’re still capable, just differently. That you didn’t stop knowing how to work. That your judgment didn’t age out when your legs started arguing back.

I hate that explanation.

I hate how small it can make you feel if you let it.

I don’t want to be seen as fragile.

I don’t want to be heroic.

I don’t want to be someone people quietly adjust expectations around.

I want to be trusted.

There are moments — more than I like to admit — when fear slips in and sits down beside me like it belongs there.

It shows up in small, stupid places.

Standing at the stove, waiting for water to boil, wondering how long I can stand before my legs start bargaining. Refreshing an inbox that hasn’t changed. Catching myself calculating how much pain is acceptable today before I commit to anything.

I hate that math.

I hate that I know how to do it.

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Sometimes the fear isn’t even about the body.

Sometimes it’s about being quietly passed over. About sensing the room decide I’m complicated before I’ve said a word. About realizing I might need to explain myself again — carefully, politely — just to be considered.

There’s a particular shame in that.

Not because I’ve done anything wrong.

But because part of me still wants to be chosen without a footnote.

And if I’m being honest — really honest — there are moments of envy too.

Watching people move through the world without thinking about balance, or heat, or recovery time. Watching younger men build momentum on bodies that haven’t started subtracting yet.

I don’t begrudge them.

But I feel it.

A tightness in the chest.

A quiet “that was supposed to be me longer than this.”

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I don’t live in that place.

But I visit it.

And every time I do, I have to choose whether I’m going to harden or stay open. Whether I’m going to turn this into bitterness, or let it pass through me without letting it define me.

Some days I do that well.

Some days I don’t.

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I’ve spent most of my life being useful — feeding people for a living, fixing what broke, carrying responsibility without needing credit for it.

Here’s the part I don’t say out loud very often:

I’m tired of pretending I’m not grieving something.

Not just strength.

Not just stamina.

I’m grieving the version of myself that never had to think twice before saying yes. The version that believed effort alone would always be enough.

Letting go of that belief feels like admitting something I wasn’t ready to lose.

And still — I’m here.

Still thinking.
Still paying attention.
Still capable of building something honest and solid if I’m careful about how I do it.

I don’t need the world to slow down.

I just need a lane where I don’t have to lie about who I am to keep moving.

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I’m learning that dignity doesn’t come from standing tall all the time.

Sometimes it comes from sitting down and staying present. From choosing work that fits instead of forcing yourself into shapes that hurt.

From letting enough be enough without turning it into failure.

If you’re somewhere near this place — quietly adjusting, carrying more than you let on — I hope you know this:

You’re not broken.

You’re not weak.

You’re not disappearing.

You’re just learning how to live inside the truth of your own body without abandoning yourself.

I’m still learning too.