The Sands of Time

Today I feel so fucking old.

Pictures of me from a meetup yesterday really showed it to me.

Gray and wrinkled. And even though I have lost a lot of weight, it is obvious I need to lose more. I am getting softer, and older, and any illusions I had of youth are now obliterated.

In my mind, I am still young and vibrant.

But my body is showing the toll of all that I have endured.

Many years.

And countless miles.

And it is so depressing.

Some of my friends are younger than I, and I look at their photos...with their girlfriends or boyfriends, wives and husbands.

And not only do I envy them the love and closeness they share with another, but I look at them as if they are a ghost of my past.

Wonderful skin and hair, young and vibrant. Beautiful people.

And I look at myself in these photos.

And I look as if I am just one step away from death.

It has been too fucking hard.

This life.

Too many tears.

Too many heartaches.

Too many losses.

And all of them are written in my eyes, and on this body.

I once was a muscular, trim and gorgeous man.

I am now barely a shell of who that man was.

I can't even bear to look in a mirror anymore. Or see a photo of me.

When I take a shot of myself...I choose the angle, the lighting (lots of shadow) and I hide as much as I can.

I now have to use PhotoShop on pictures of me, because I can't stand to show the real me in a shot. I need to soften the lines on my face first. Otherwise, it looks like a map of the Grand Canyon.

I despise what my life has done to me.

For what it has cost me in my soul, has finally started to reveal itself in my face and body.

And I look for all the world like a man who is beaten and devastated, and who has suffered horribly.

And, I am. And I have.

I just wish I didn't have to look at him.

I wish I still had a life in front of me. Where I was youthful and attractive.

Times long gone.

I am blessed to be able to turn my camera and lens at the beauty of this world. The birds and animals that are timeless.

I will never again turn the camera on myself.

I have seen enough of the cost of my life.

I do not need to ever gaze upon it again.