35 with real mixed feelings about it, just started skating again this spring after a really, really long break (so long I won't even say). Sorry if this gets real hokey here, but long story short, quitting skating was a huge mistake; I always felt like a skateboarder before anything else and craved the feeling of urethane and concrete beneath my feet basically all the time I wasn't doing it. I knew that I was the way I was as a person, good and bad, mostly because I grew from a child into an adult as a skateboarder back when that actually meant being an outsider, even sometimes among other skateboarders. That can do something to a person, and in my case it forced me to think about all kinds of things in all areas of life on my own without even considering the received wisdom. I stopped because I had no one to skate with anymore--I was the last of my high school crew to hang it up--but I told myself it was because I had to move into a new phase of life and put aside childish things.
I struggled in my life since I quit, tormented by feeling like there was no place in the world for me, someone too weird to function. I accomplished a lot (school, amazing family, career, etc.) on paper, but literally the entire time I wished I was dead. I did something about that about a year ago and spent some time in the hospital. After I got out of the hospital, I still struggled and I kept feeling like I needed to go back to the hospital so I wouldn't hurt myself again. Then one day I saw my old board sitting in the closet. I was feeling down and anxious, so I just grabbed it to push around on the street and and maybe snap some ollies over speed bumps, if I still could. After pushing around for a few minutes and hearing that sound again--the one like you're standing on a tiny jet--I could suddenly imagine what feeling more like a whole person was like, like there was some hope of hanging on until I could repair some of the damage. I realized if I could do that then I could keep hanging on until I could repair a little more and a little more. I have gone skating almost every day since early March, started getting tricks back slowly, and now here I am, still skating, still hanging on. I learned so much from quitting that I wish I didn't have to. My body will be broken or I will die before I quit again.
I'm not good, and I never was; I was a brute who liked to go fast, muscle through really long grinds and slides, and wear out wheels bombing hills and powersliding. I am finally starting to feel that old brutishness coming back when I skate street, crashing my board into things going really fast and hanging on. There is nothing else in the world, no other feeling that can possibly compare. There were almost no concrete parks built in my area when I was young, so I am finally starting to get into more like what you might call "park skating" (bowls, hips, pyramids, etc.), which is hard and scary, but it's fun and I can feel it making me more confident on the board all the time.
TL; DR: Skating is fun, never quit because it could save your life one day.
Topic: Old Dudes Post Up Here... (Read 304314 times)