30

A friend’s mom once told me, “When I woke up on the morning  of my thirtieth birthday, I thought, ‘No one can fuck with me now.’” I loved the way she said it, steely and unyielding, her eyes narrowing even now, as she remembered it at 60. I know the statement is mostly untrue, but still the thought, the certainty, the revelation – something only to be made on solid ground, forged on the gravelly ascent. 

The author, slightly before her 30th birthday.

I’ve been telling everyone I was 30 ever since I turned 29. I don’t know what compels me to do that. Maybe it’s a childish instinct, attaching significance to numbers like I did at 10 or 16 or 18 or 21. More likely it’s a consuming desire to pull myself up and out of a decade that was jarring and raw. Now that seems especially poignant as the pandemic situation has forced me to strip all pomp and circumstance away from a birthday I’ve been thinking about for years – working toward almost, like I have control over how fast time passes.

My twenties dragged. I lived in a way meant to generate fantastic stories to tell later; tales that now seem like empty banter that I unsuccessfully used to make my life feel full. A dozen “relationships” that were really just me trying to find myself. A hundred crying fights and a hundred ecstatic epiphanies that meant nothing the next day. A thousand sidewalks slapped, a million tabs paid. Big big mistakes, some that tossed me into soft nets and some that knocked the wind right out of me. A few little but sacred triumphs. Infinite revolving doors and treadmills and subways and highway commutes, steps traced and retraced; muscle memory etched and lessons learned too many times. Hot shame and tears I couldn’t stop from coming then, but can now. People given to me, and people taken away; one of my most important people teetering on the edge of the taking. 

But lately there’s been a subtle shift in my mental status quo, a centering almost. The mysteries of life that always amazed me as a child have mostly been demystified over the last couple of years. Like I used to marvel at how my mother was always right about people, how she knew what would happen and what they would do. Now I move through life automatically, intuiting the same judgments: this person is trustworthy, that person is attracted to me, those people are full of shit. Wash, rinse, repeat. 

At home, I’m suddenly able to efficiently run my own little household. I’m organized for the first time in my life. Mess unnerves me where it used to act as my shield. I can’t stop thinking about my double bathroom sink in my apartment in grad school: it was about 8 feet long and every inch was constantly covered with makeup and products and a 22-year-old’s debris. Now I’m that person who gets bothered when there are other people in my kitchen, putting my ceramic knives in the dishwasher and my Tupperware on the Mason Jar shelf.

In my career, I’ve acquired the unexpected duty and the unexpected ability to counsel the young, passionate kid who thinks they know better. It’s funny to find yourself suddenly in the role of the wizened pragmatist who has to let that kid down easy, gently signaling that this is not a big deal. It’s weird to not be that kid anymore, to remember that you sobbed in the janitor’s closet over some similar situation a mere 5 years ago.

In my social life, I’ve lost the sense of panic surrounding what will happen if someone doesn’t love me. My grandfather always said that not everyone has to like you. I’ve always understood the sentiment, but never lived it until now. If you don’t like me, that’s okay with me. I mean you’re wrong, but that’s okay with me.

Being in your 20s is like the freshman year of adulthood. Will being 30 take away the pain of being awkward and exposed? Will it rid me of constant feelings that I don’t belong anywhere, that I’m doing everything wrong? Not sure, but I’m having a solid feeling about it. If I had to put it into words, it’s almost like: No one can fuck with me now.