I turn 30 this today. It’s also Friday the 13th which is always fun. A harvest moon or so I’m told.

I was just so anxious to enter my 20s, anxious to be an adult. A lot has happened over the last decade. I got engaged. I studied abroad and traveled overseas for the first time.  I graduated college. I got married. I went on my first job interviews, I got my first internship. I worked at those jobs and quit those jobs. I made a lot of friends and lost a lot of friends. I moved to new apartments and new neighborhoods. I had a baby. I moved across the country and then had another one. I tried my hand at renovating a house. And yet, I felt like an imposter throughout most of it. Like I was somehow still 19, and I was just play pretending at being an adult. I look around and wonder if everyone else feels the same way to. I feel like everyone’s looking at me and they all know my secret...that the makeup, the hair, the clothes, are all just a clever camouflage designed to distract from that fact that I’m just kid and have absolutely no business being in charge of a human being, let alone 2. 

I’m also hyper aware of my mortality. Perhaps because no one will let you forget that one day you will wake up and be 50. You will blink and your child will be fully grown and graduating from high school. This compounded by the fact that everyday it seems we see a national tragedy unfold on the news, weather related disasters, freak accidents, gun violence, lives cut short for some senseless reason. People get sick. People die. 

Aging for whatever reason is harder on women. We have so much pressure to look a certain way and then to stay looking that way forever. Fit, trim, make-up, hair, clothes, all the things. Ads using phrases like “Age defying something or other” in 104 pt font. I’ve always looked older for my age which was more fun in my teens but I can’t help but notice now that I haven’t been carded in awhile. Now, I have grey hairs I have to tame and show who’s boss. The face I’ve used to express excitement, joy, surprise, shock, anger, and sadness is sporting the beginnings of crows feet and my forehead feels permanently wrinkled from all the eyebrow movement. Aging is hard. It reminds you simultaneously of all that’s in your past, the memories both good and bad, any and all regrets, the things you didn’t do and the things you still have to do. It. Is. Scary. But I’m also excited and proud. Proud that I made it this far because sadly I know some that never got the opportunity to turn 30. Growing older is a privilege and a blessing denied to many. 

There is some good news though. In the more recent past I’ve discovered red wine isn’t the enemy, I actually like and find joy in a dark chocolate truffle and I’m increasingly clicking on NYT articles on Twitter blazing through my allotted free articles for the month at an alarming rate and I perhaps should invest in a subscription...there she is. Thirty, coming in hot and right on time. Adulting...but for real this time.

Wish me luck.