Thirty

I turn 30 today. I had been so optimistic about it, almost excited to finally leave these 20s behind. A decade filled with growing pains, repetitive fears and anxieties, days (or weeks, maybe months!) lost to insecurity and comparison, and endless “somethings” lurking around every new year - a new question, a new symptom, a new pain, a new diagnosis to now deal with. I felt very eager to enter into my 30s and step into a version of myself I’ve been excited to meet, one more enlightened, mature, confident, independent, healthy… but as I embrace her today and take stock, it doesn’t feel how I thought it would. It feels like I’ve brought a big weight to hand over to her.

The end of my 20s has seemed inconsistent, where I feel 29 one day, 17 the next, 25 another. Some days are down days, hopeless days – the ones filled with fatigue, sadness, grief, or nostalgia. Other days are up days, hopeful days where I catch glimpses of progress, awakening, peace. I had naively hoped that by 30, after all the work I’ve put in, all the steps forward that I’ve managed to make, my days would even out and become more linear. Less variation, less surprise, less of the bad.

My last week of 29 was overshadowed by ‘crap gap’, the period of time where, in between infusions, your last dose of treatment is tapering off. It’s been weeks of being in a hazy funk, of feeling worse than I did before I even started treatment, and though I know this happens every time, I’m still always caught off guard (and frustrated!) by how low and heavy I feel. The timing is almost comical, when I think about it. During a week where I thought I could choose and control how I stepped into a new year, a week where I believed that turning 30 would be it, the closing of the gate to all the baggage from my 20s, blocking it from tainting this fresh, untouched decade… here it all is, gearing up to make sure none of it’s forgotten, that nothing gets left behind. But maybe that’s the way it was always supposed to be.

I’m thinking now that my 20s were squeezing in one more lesson for me – that you can’t have the good without the bad. Life can’t be solely sunshine. You need a little rain and cloud, too. In fact, the rain and cloud are what give you the things you love so much about those sunny days – the flowers, the grass, the growth. To wish away all of the bad, the sad, and the ugly would also mean I’d lose all of the good, the joy, and the beauty that I experienced on the other side of them.

Instead of losing myself in what this last week has felt like, the only thing I can really choose and control as I turn 30 is my perspective. So with that, I am choosing to see my 20s as both informative and transformative, the highs and lows uncovering the person I am while simultaneously shaping her into someone better and greater than she was the day before. I’m choosing to see my 20s as the birthplace of all the love that I found and can carry forward – the love with and for my partner, one that truly redefined for me what it means to love and be loved; the love I found for myself and all the parts of me that needed to hear me say it. I’m choosing to validate that my 20s were hard because they were (relative to me, of course). Acknowledging that, though, doesn’t feel as negative as it might read. It feels empowering to recognize that I made it through some really tough moments, some of which are not over, and that gives me the confidence in what I’m bringing forth into my 30s, both good and bad. I wouldn’t want to leave the accomplishments, the growth, and the love in my 20s behind just because they were born out of tough circumstances. There will always be hard things to go through, and my 30s will have their own highs and lows, no doubt. But, my 20s have equipped me! 

And maybe that’s how I should choose to see myself as I enter 30 – instead of burdened, weighed down, and already a step behind who I thought I’d be, I am actually a perfect balance of the heavy and light, highs and lows, capable to handle whatever might come across my path next, capable to move through it like it’s part of the dance.