The idea of turning 30 gave me anxiety. I remember my mom asking “what do you want to do for your birthday?”, and all I could think about were the societal milestones I constructed at the ripe age of 16 (then enforced by social media) that still were not checked. At the time, I was two months out from the big 3–0 and I had 60 days to find my soulmate, grow and birth a child, grow and birth another child, and be the peak of my professional career. With the right mindset and can-do attitude, that seemed doable.
It was not doable.
This unrealistic timeline was fueling the pending doom that was my birthday. It was almost like Cinderella being told that at midnight on August 31, 2019, she would turn into a pumpkin… forever. I was that pumpkin.
I never had an issue with getting older, but for some reason this self-inflicted milestone made me replay every opportunity and relationship that didn’t fall in my favor including those that didn’t even come to fruition. I couldn’t shake that maybe, maybe, one of those would have been the golden ticket to the life that I envisioned for myself when I turned 30…. how dramatic.
Spoiler: I was fine.
I was more than fine. How I felt the day before turning 30 was exactly how I was going to feel the day after. Life would continue and no one…
