Bad, bad negative thinking

A week from today, I turn 60, an age that four years ago I was unsure I would reach. Although I am grateful for each year that I have gotten to live since my cancer diagnosis, I have the ordinary feelings of sadness too. Although it is a gift to be alive, I am nonetheless getting older, not younger. And I look and feel older than most of my contemporaries. With my sparse gray hair, flat chest, wretched back issues, I am not the kind of 60-year-old who can pass for 40. I've been offered the senior discount for years now (and when it's offered, I take it out of revenge). I figure most strangers assume I'm 10 years older than I am. And though I know my physical self is just housing for the rest of me, it bothers me that my house has fallen into such disrepair. If only the bank would repossess me and fix me up! Or if only I lived in a world where an antique house was treasured rather than viewed as an eyesore likely to bring down the neighborhood.