When You’re Single and You Turn 30

My twenties were a barren wasteland. A person’s twenties are for trying everything and making a laundry list of what they do and do not want. They’re for making nine hundred mistakes, and then having really good stories. Everyone my age will tell you they spent their twenties clueless, trying their hardest to find the right job, dating assholes, traveling (fuck the ones who were traveling, tbh), and while yes, I was doing some of those things, it’s not what I was doing. I wasn’t doing anything.

Here’s my dirty little secret. I pretty much had it all figured out at the age of twenty three. I knew what I wanted, acutely, down to the flowers on my front stoop. I knew exactly with whom I wanted to settle down (the archetype anyway), the kind of work I wanted to do and how I wanted to do it, and how many kids I wanted to have (however many my loving husband would let me have, roughly). And I set out to get what I want. And the universe, in its churning, indifferent omnipotence, said, “lol no.”

Instead it sent me more than half a dozen job opportunities — fledgling promises that if I worked hard and steady, I’d do alright. One by one, for any reason you can dream up, the doors closed. Many fell victim to the 2008 California economy. Once, I found myself hired by a high-functioning drug addict who became a non-functioning drug addict. Shifts in company focus, pay freeze, slow growth, no growth… you name it, I’ve been fed the line. There was a time I was working a pretty menial retail job, put in my two weeks notice after a few months to try for something a little more aspirational, and on my last day, the building caught on fire. I don’t know what kind of omen that could be, but I’d put money on “not a good one.”

Then, the universe sent me a guy. And he was great. He was different than anyone I’d ever met — his personality, his interests, the way he grew up… our futures didn’t align, but I was twenty four and I wanted to learn things from him. And my twenties were a wasteland.

We were together for five years. I spent the bulk of my allotted “figure it out” time with him, not figuring it out. I was optimistically hoping it would work itself out. Nothing about it seemed like it would, to be clear. I wanted to get married some day and he didn’t. I wanted kids and he didn’t. I wanted to move back to the Midwest when our impossible kids were ready to start school because the schools are better there and the homes are more affordable, and his answer was usually a gentle, “Over my dead body.” And yet I dug in my heels, because he loved me, and no one ever had before, and I was afraid that no one ever would again.

Then thirty reared its ugly head. Things started churning in me. I ended it.

Everyone my age will also tell you that thirty is actually great. They’re assholes. They sit cradling their brand new babies, in their living rooms furnished with matching furniture, calling out to their loving husbands, asking them to finish a chore before they head off to a job that will pay their reasonable mortgages, and then they turn and tell me, “Thirty is actually pretty great.”

Me. They sit there, their sanguine faces staring at mine, which is bloated in hangover, and tell me that thirty is great. Me, who pieced together my living room from Santa Cruz cast-offs and whatever I could buy off my ex-boyfriend’s grandma for two hundred bucks. Me, who spent most of my twenties making financial mistakes and working for less than I’m worth (according to all my internet research), but chalking it up to the fact that I majored in art instead of anything else, and am probably not any good at my job anyway.

Me, riddled with self doubt, college debt, and the infliction that frightens only my parents more than it frightens me, single.

I’ve read dozens of articles defending women in their thirties who are not married and don’t have kids, are married and don’t have kids, don’t want to be married, hate kids, love kids but love their careers more, and while it’s all important discourse… what if you’re in your thirties and that’s all you want?

And worse, what if you’re in your thirties and everyone has what you want but you?

Complaining is unbecoming, and so is jealousy. No one will want to date a sad-sack. So I grin. I bear it. I bury it. I act casual. And then the comments.

They started at a trickle. A playful toss here or there that didn’t even permeate my thinning, near-thirty skin. “Ohh, have a baby,” my mom would coo after a new human, strapped to its father, would stride by our table. Then my pregnant friends: “Just have a baby, already.” “Be pregnant with us!” “God, when are you gonna get on it and have one!?” It was all playful. But the flippant delivery, like it had just slipped my mind, like I was going to get a car wash on the way home, but my routine had left me at my doorstep before I remembered, like it was easy and I was just dumb, it started to bore into me.

And I can’t tell them to shut it. The only thing sadder than being the childless friend is being the sad, childless friend. Bury it. Smile. No one will love you if you’re sad. No one wants to date Baby Crazy.

Thirty comes. I stay out as late as I care to, I spend the evening in a tequila blur. I have fun, and twenty five year olds at the bar buy me shots that taste like grape popsicles. I say things like, “I haven’t done shots since college.” But my best friends aren’t there, because they’re at home, nursing.

Patience is hard. Not just because we live in a time of instant gratification, but because I’m a woman, and my idle brain spends its time calculating how old my mother was when she had her last child and how soon after she started menopause. Calculating how quickly my wasteland twenties flew by and how much more quickly the next decade will. Trying to imagine how I’ll navigate the decades after my chance passes me by, and how I’ll bury the regret and sadness like I buried the anxiety and the questions. Why don’t I have the things I’ve worked for? What did I do wrong? What if I don’t figure it out in time?

It’s not easy and there are no answers, and I know I’m not the only one. But I’ll end this before it gets too Bridget Jones.

If you’re my ex-boyfriend and you’re reading this, I don’t regret you. I learned about what I want in life and how to value someone else’s life goals as much as I value my own. I learned a lot about perspective. And I learned what it feels like when someone loves you the best they can. It feels amazing. It’s a treasure.

If you’re my friends with babies and you’re reading this, of all the feelings that swim through my head, resentment for you is not among them. I love you and your families. Your happiness brings tears to my eyes, mostly of gratitude and joy and yes, a little bit of pure wanting. For every struggle I’ve had, I know you’ve had your own seemingly insurmountable struggles, and you’ve earned all the peace and happiness you have.

If you’re a handsome dude looking for a wife and you’re reading this, lol jk, I’m cool as a cucumber. I have a great credit score. My body’s a 4/10, but if yours is too, that’s okay by me.