Growing older means meeting consequences your younger self assumed belonged to strangers.

For a long time, certain consequences appear to belong to other people. The illness, the failing parent, the money that runs out, the friendship that ends without a fight. Then a year comes when they are yours, and the shift is not gradual so much as sudden, arriving with the discovery that you were never actually exempt.

When this happens, be careful of the reflex to conclude that you should have known. Nobody lives fully braced, and the earlier ease was not a failure of seriousness. What helps most is finding the people who have been here already, since almost everyone eventually has, and letting them tell you what they learned.