I Know I'm Alive!!

Some days I wonder why do I feel so.....old. It's hard to start moving first thing in the morning. By the time I get out of the shower my legs already hurt. While drying my hair, I spend a good 5 minutes blow drying my legs just for the heat. It is comforting. By the end of the day, my legs have stabbing pains, spasms, tightness and constant ache. Not to mention the arthritis in my knees and the torn muscle in my lower back or the tension in my shoulders and neck.
Seriously...I'm not even 40 yet. But I have depression, peripheral vascular disease (PVD) with intermittent claudication, arthritis, and of course good ole allergies. All of which I take medication for.
I try to remember days when I didn't hurt. It seems so long ago now. Years actually. I can't remember when or what it felt like. I see kids/people jumping around or running. I remember that. I used to feel weightless and could do anything. Now I feel like gravity has a strong magnetic pull on me and my body weighs a ton. It's so hard to move some days.
The depression I've been diagnosed with is usually situational or seasonal. I do have anxiety occasionally and have some OCD tendencies. I am on medication for this which has helped alot. I am not emotionally hypersensitive like I usually am, although some times I do feel disconnected from any emotion at all.
The arthritis I suffer from is osteoarthritis. It's basically wear and tear on my joints due to usage/over-usage. In my case, I used to be fairly active. Especially as a Kempo Kickboxer. I have the grinding knees that barely bend on cold days and I do have some arthrtitis in other joints that ache as well. Stupid weather predictors.
The allergies I blame on Kansas. It's the grass here. I'm just not used to. I stay congested all the time. Hopefully when we leave here, it will clear up.
Peripheral Vascular Disease (PVD)....this is basically bad circulation. It sounds bad I know. It's when the veins (peripheral meaning outside the heart) constrict or have hardened and not enough blood can reach the muscles which results in a lack of oxygen. This causes Intermittent Claudication. That's the pain I experience. I have the claudication from the waist down. especially from my inner thighs just above the knees to my ankles. I am in constant pain. The more I move, the more pain I experience because the blood is trying to get through to the muscles, but it can't. Resting is the only time the pain eases up a little. Then my legs just feel tight and they twitch and I feel like I need to stretch them alot.

So tell me...how does a 39 year old suffer from all these ailments?? I sound like I should be 69 years old instead.
I think the fact that I do feel so old is because I've lived my life like a wild person!! HAHA Actually I think maybe I just didn't take as good care of myself as I should have. That's what it basically boils down to. In hindsight, I don't know if I really would have changed my life. Maybe cut back on the fast food and the grease and possibly not smoked all those years I did. But there's no looking back now. I can only deal with what I've got now. And that's a worn out body that wants to be young again.
I've got these little tricks I do when I'm editting portraits I take where I can remove wrinkles. I've done it enough that when I look at myself in the mirror, in my mind I am visually running a mouse over the wrinkles on my face and erasing them. If only we really could do this!!! That would be awesome!
I also would use the "thinify" option as well with some creative cropping. Of coruse to do all this in real life requires work that causes me pain. sigh.
One day...I'm gonna feel better...physically and emotionally, mentally and spiritually. I promise myself that!!!  Not sure how I'm gonna accomplish this, but I'm gonna figure it out!! At least with all this pain, I know I'm alive!!!