What it feels like, oddly, is tears. The pain behind your eyes just before you start crying; the word “ache” suddenly seems so poetically correct. You spend a few days hoping it’s because you had to do things alone when you wanted help, but then you don’t really need help and the ache goes on even when you’re treated royally. Holding back the tears. You spend a few weeks trying different movements, trying to find out where it is specifically, this sharp ache that emerges not here and not there but is a lightning bolt when it hits. Your mind scurries down corridors of dread, rattling the handles of worst case scenarios and confronting mortality which is easier than confronting the slow tedious changes you might have to make to everyday life. You try alternatives and emerge bruised and bloodied, wondering if the pain is less or merely less comparatively. There was a Czech film where a man tries to cure his wife of her personality with electricity. Would that work? Probably not but also you’d probably try it. In the end it’s the simple fact of aging, which you knew about already. It’s less excess, it’s slower movement, no more reading in bed, an increase in the gentleness you show yourself. Some body parts weren’t meant to live as long as others and every day is a gift. See, that’s not so bad, is it.