Is This What Turning 50 Brings? by David Rushing

Is This What Turning Fifty Brings?

Is this what turning fifty brings—

rage, madness, and the realization
that much of one’s life has been squandered
in the half-fog of hardly discernable reality,

and that with the arrival of yet more terrible layers of emotional hell and physical pain
comes the understanding that the once dreaded fear
of dying “too soon” has been replaced with a yearning for death

before insanity reigns supreme?