30 Left of 30
I have 30 days left of being in my 30s.
Which is a terrifying thought.
I'm trying to look back and remember what it felt like to turn 30, and I can't, really. I mean, there was a lot of gin involved, but I do recall thinking I wasn't a kid anymore, that I had to grow up. But if I'm being honest, I put that last part in quotation marks, quipping pithy remarks like "30 is the new 20" which is true in some ways. In many. But not all.
Then I turned 35 and it got real. Scary real. The days of looking forward to my birthdays, of longing to be older, ended back when I was 21, but this was a new level of dread that I had never felt before: all of a sudden I was old. 35 is officially over the hill for a single woman. It marks your expiration date, the end of your viable fertility without significant risk, and a life sentence to the over 50 set in the world of online dating. It's a fate I wouldn't wish on anyone. Unless 5 more years go by and suddenly you're turning 40 and you would give anything, a kidney, a million dollars, an eye, to be 30 again. Or even just 35.
I have friends, plenty of friends, who tell me it's "not so bad" (there are the quotation marks again). Said friends are all married with children. So they can't really tell me how it is, now can they?
And it isn't all bad: I'm older, but I'm also wiser. More confident. Successful. I've reinvented myself many times over and have emerged victorious. I have a job that I love, I'm climbing the corporate ladder, I have many friends scattered across the globe, I'm finally no longer drowning in debt, and I will be spending my dreaded birthday in a villa in St Martin with my closest friends. Not bad.
Not what I expected. Not what I planned. But that's the way the cookie crumbles.
For the next 30 days I plan to reflect on certain lessons that I've learned over the past four decades. Some I wish I had learned earlier. I just hope it's not too late to grow up without growing old.