A Pirate Looks at Forty (-Four)

Tomorrow I turn forty-four.  That's a lot of years.  A lot of things I've done.  I'll keep saying it: I'm still surprised I'm not dead yet.
Hopefully this year's "festivities" pass with little fanfare.  Thankfully I have nothing planned, but I didn't last year until plans changed.  (I'm beginning to see a pattern.)  Today I head to Las Vegas on business for a couple days.  I'm hoping this is the extent of anything outside my routine to happen this week.
Looking back at things I've done and have happened is becoming more often measured in decades for me now.  I have an increasing number of mistakes, I mean life lessons, in my past.  Looking into the future is becoming more dreadful.  I remember thinking I had plenty of time for things later in my life.  Now it's later in my life and have no idea how much time I have left.  It's getting difficult to get excited for what's coming up anymore.  This year I get to venture out on living by myself; forty-four years and this will hopefully a successful attempt at doing that.  Later in the year will be the divorce planning.  Too many of those it seems anymore.  Here's hopping I stay true to my plans of not doing that again.  Then there's the other thing this year of not seeking companionship.  I'll confess, recently there were opportunities, but, Jesus, the panic attacks take the steam right out of those sails.  I noticed the mixed metaphor, but you get the point.
How is it, at this age, I cannot be strictly physically intimate with anyone I have zero emotions for?  Why has every one of those encounters ended with guilt and apologies?  I don't look back at those encounters with regret, but I also don't look forward to repeating it with those individuals.  That statement seems hurtful and void of feelings, but it's a decades old fact for me.  Yep, if I don't want to make the mistake of another relationship, I'll have to do better at being celibate.  I don't think I can physically go through that again, and I don't want to make that shift that removes that end result.
Huh.  Thinking of her again.  I guess there's that one I could, but only because I foolishly always felt something for her.  Thankful, it's been almost impossible to ever hang out with her.  It would seem that she too is trying to avoid that which should not be acknowledged.  She's even said it's too bad that I can't just be physical without the emotional connection.  Yep.  Very bad.
One would think with the title, this would have been more Jimmy Buffett themed; but, nope, apparently I'm just going to mull about my learnt situation and pine for the same girl I cannot have.  If anything, it reminds me of my youth, when I failed my first marriage and sought happiness in a school mate.  Obviously that one didn't pan out either, but she was quite a different set of obstacles.  But maybe this time...
Hopefully we all know better.