I’m finally healthy enough to write this. Well, honestly not exactly. I am just a bit more honest, and if I am beinghonest, I am shaking while writing this. I haven’t been in front of a computer typing anything other than an email or coverage of a true crime case in months. The last time I wrote, I just… well I threw up on the keyboard, I was so hellbent on getting anything and everything out that nothing really came out. Nothing of substance anyway, I was lost and confused and angry and upset, and desperate. So, I took a long break. Call it Saturns Return, a quarter life crisis, or the results of a lobotomy, but writing and creativity just hasn’t been my strong suit probably for the past year. I remember when I was 23, and I first really started writing, things were different. I was in the thick of it with life, sitting at a cubicle working a job that I swore I’d be at for only 2 years, complaining about my 4’11 coworker who worked odd hours from like 11:00am to 7:00pm, and constantly gossiped about the 12 other people that worked in that office. I was happy to see my first paycheck even though I was barely breaking $45,000 a year, and I had the entire world to look forward to, so writing about things like slow commutes, or doing your make up on the train just made sense. I was funny, and blunt, bold and oblivious.
In the past seven years, my life has taken a complete 180. I have a new roommate, and its my boyfriend, I still sit at a cubicle but this time with a couple degrees under my belt that justify my salary, and I spend my week days doing things like going to pilates (even though I’m not losing an ounce of weight) and hanging out with my friends, getting wasted on wine, instead of tequila bought by 45 year old promoters. I enjoy dinners, and I go to therapy regulary. I reflect on what life was like when I was the thick of it. Instead of giving my best interpretation of advice to others while in the thick of it.
Let’s take today for example. I stood on the same metro train I’ve ridden for years, gripping the clammy poll, wondering how many hands that day have held the same cylinder metal rod in between my palms and finger tips. I glance at my reflection in the dark window while looking down at my purse, I left my headphones at the office. Fuck. So, it’s just me and my thoughts. My belly is full of sloshed Cabernet, and I’m on my way back from happy hour with my grad school friends. Grad school friends Ivana, do you remember when you wanted to go to grad school to make friends? We went to this restaurant, Boqueria a place I’ve been half a dozen times, (I’m not bragging I just love a tapas menu with bottomless drinks) and ate the best croquettes I’ve ever had in my damn life. My friends bought me churros for my birthday, which happens to be one of my favorite desserts, and as the server brought the plate to the table, the sparkler trickled down and everyone lightly sang to me. I … actually really don’t like public singing for birthdays, despite the fact that I tell all of my business on a public forum, I’m not really into public attention in that way. So as the sparkler burns its way down I’m thinking wow this is slow, do I make a wish? Do I sing as well? How chubby are my cheeks going to look on these off guard photos?
I say all that to say my days are both different and the same, as they were years ago, I’m still hanging with my friends, still out on a week day, still taking the metro, still thinking a mile a minute.
When I turned 30, I feel like that frontal lobe I was told about really showed up. I mean I was mature at 25, in the basic ways, I knew I wanted to continue my education, change up my writing, make more money, finally settle down and get a long term boyfriend. I started making better decisions. I took the time to get to know myself more (but that may be mainly due to the pandemic and having no choice.) I had all the right intentions.
But 30, feels like some of the missing pieces, were just hiding behind time. It’s like this inner voice finally interrupted the insecure one. I spent my 30th with my family. And it probably was one of the best birthdays I’ve ever had. My perspective on my life started to shift. I won’t bore you with all the details cause its only really special to me. But somewhere between looking out of the oval window on the airplane, to laying out on the beach with my mom and sisters, to scratching my bug bites in the hot shower back in my apartment, I just thought that things are going to be okay, if I take the time to acknowledge where I am at right now. I have this feeling that I really have to be present because all I fully have is right now. I know all of that sounds poetic, borderline corny even, but its really harder than it appears. I mean its easier to do it on vacation in another country, than on your normal day to day. Presence forces you to acknowledge both the new and old versions of yourself. They say by 30 you don’t care what people think or things all fall into place. I am here to tell you that’s not fully true. I mean I’ve only been here a few days, but it wasn’t like I completely merged into this new person now that I am 30.
I still am me, I still kind of really care what people think, I still get excited when people are shocked that I say I’m 30 (whatever at least I can admit it,) I am still working on what I think of myself. I just am able to be really honest about all that. And here’s the thing, being honest about being a work in progress is much more impressive than being a completed work in progress. If things all just perfectly align and fall into place, it kind of makes you question what life was like prior to that. If everything is “perfect” what’s the point of any existence before? The before matters, just as much as the after, but not nearly as much as the during. Turning 30 I feel relief. Which seems strange because normally I’m thinking about what’s next, what I have to achieve, where I have to go. For the first time I feel like its okay to take time to make peace with what was, and be grateful for what is.
Originally I wanted to be this healed version of myself since, 30s is supposed to be when we hit these specific milestones. Big girl job, marriage, kids, travel, peak hotness, but now that I’m here, I’m more so aware of the things I want to change within, instead of focused on the inevitable change that’s going to happen around me.
I think 30 is this era where you finally see all the things you did in your 20s paying off. Whether in a good or bad way, you know where you are, your feet are on the ground, even if you aren’t familiar with the soil.
Which brings us to today, I’m back and I’m better, I’m actually hoping I’m funnier. There was a blip in the timeline about a year ago when I shared a few trauma dump related essays on social media and my website, lucky for me all of 3 people read it. Unlucky for me one of them was my old neighbor meets family friend, who I reached out to for career advice. I’m sure he stumbled upon the first paragraph of one of my pieces from 2023 while looking through my LinkedIn, read it, and drove home to give his daughter the biggest hug and kiss. “Phew honey, things could be worse”
But things are better now, and I think this version of me has a better perspective on things, is a little more open without scaring you away, and just feels a bit more familiar. I hope that you are in a similar space, and we can continue to find our voices together, cause no one tells you what to do when you’re on the other side of survival, or you’re at least seeing it on the horizon. How do you act once the dust settles? I’m not really sure, so here I am in the new thick of it. Writing what I think anyone should want to here, a reality check, or if I had one, something my big sister would say.
