People keep asking me what 30 feels like, and I keep
responding with “Just like 29.”
And, I’m, not even trying to be funny; really, it’s not as
if on the 18th of February, everything for me changed. I woke up and
felt the way I felt the day before.
I’ve felt “30” (or, how ever I think 30 is and was supposed
to feel) a while ago, actually. It was the moment I woke up and realized I was
comfortable in my own skin, which is something I can say I never felt in the
first 28 years of my life. When I realized how blessed I truly have been and
truly am and stopped focusing on everything that was or could or might go
wrong, everything changed.
Being an adult is sort of a funny thing, especially when you
don’t realize that it’s happening. And, when you become an adult, you realize
it has little to do with age and more to do with experience. I still wake up
and wonder when it happened: when I started to enjoy going to bed at 9pm
instead of staying up until midnight; when I started to prefer a night in with
a glass/bottle of wine than go out to a loud bar or lounge or restaurant; When I
started to enjoy balancing my checkbook and filing my paperwork and organizing
my drawers and creating a schedule; when I started to love doing laundry and
writing thank you cards and buying crap from Home Goods. I mean, seriously, who
am I?
But honestly, for me, being an adult has become less about
the things I do and the time I go to bed. It’s really about the person I have
become. Well, first, just KNOWING who I am and not spending all of my life
feeling lost and sad and insecure; just being comfortable with who I am and
where I am. Being an adult, to me, is feeling productive and responsible with
my time and my choices. Being an adult is realizing that I don’t have to spend
time with any one who doesn’t make me feel good about myself, who doesn’t care
about me, or who makes me feel anything less than like a good person. Being an
adult is also knowing that if it means I only have a couple good friends, I’m
still better off.
This place in my life is way more exciting than my 20s ever
were and not because nothing exciting happened in my 20s, but because I’m in a
place in my life where I can understand the exciting things and enjoy them and
LIVE. I’m living and not just trying to get by or get through. I’m enjoying
being with my friends, hanging out with my parents and being able to have that
kind of relationship with them, watching my friends have babies and get
married. I’m enjoying being in a relationship with a man who works hard, opens
doors for me, doesn’t judge my craziness, and who doesn’t ever make me question
how he feels or what he wants. I’m enjoying working at a job that I’m good at,
that I enjoy, that I feel productive at. Mostly, I’m enjoying where I’m at and
looking forward to the next decade of my life and what it will bring.
