This Is the Decade

This is the decade your friends start dying.

This is the decade your parents’ health becomes fragile, if they’re even still here.

This is the decade your marriage feels less like romance and more like survival.

This is the decade you wonder if staying means losing yourself, but leaving means losing everything.

This is the decade you realize your career has probably peaked.

This is the decade your boss looks younger than your kids.

This is the decade the raises shrink, the titles flatten, and retirement feels less like freedom and more like math you’ll never solve.

This is the decade your body betrays you.

The aches don’t go away.

The weight doesn’t drop as fast.

The mirror stops being kind.

This is the decade you start wondering if a little nip and tuck would fix what gravity already claimed.

This is the decade you realize wrinkle cream is just expensive lotion with better PR.

This is the decade invisibility creeps in.

Waiters look past you.

Apps ignore you.

You walk into a room and no one shifts to make space.

This is the decade time accelerates.

The years stack faster, like cards slipping from a deck.

The past feels closer than the future.

The margin for error is gone.

And yet.

This is the decade you stop lying to yourself.

This is the decade you say the hard truths out loud.

This is the decade you strip off the costume of “fine” and wear your actual face.

This is the decade you realize survival was never the same as living.

This is the decade you start again, even now.