I’m pretty sure everyone close to me was gearing up for me to have a major breakdown about turning thirty.
In the weeks before my birthday, my mom would call me and, very gently, ask me how I was feeling. Thinking she was concerned about some stomach bug going around or the latest snowstorm, I would reply that I was fine. As the day drew closer, she got more specific, asking how I was feeling about turning “the big 3-0.”
My answer was the same – I felt fine about it. Was I thrilled about getting bumped out of the 18-29 bracket? No. Did I like saying, “I’m thirty” out loud. Nah. But, it was fine.
When people were shocked at my sense of chill over this milestone birthday, I always explained that a lot of my closest friends have already turned thirty – I’m a baby compared to them. They all turned thirty, and they didn’t all of a sudden transform into grey-haired, robe-wearing hermits. They’re still pounding mimosas with me at bottomless brunch, or spontaneously getting their ears pierced in a basement on Macdougal.
But if I’m really honest, the sense of peace that came with turning thirty really came when I was forced to look at the way I thought my life would turn out when I was thirteen years old. I had to come face to face with the fact that things turned out differently than I thought they would.
I remember my mom telling me – ages ago – that she was one of the last of her group of friends to get married. She was 25 years old.
In that moment, I built a narrative for how my life would play out – I would go to college, move to New York City, work at a magazine, meet a guy and be happily married in my mid-twenties. I’d have my dream job, my dream apartment in my dream city, and everything would be dreamy.
That plan started to fall apart pretty much from the beginning – I never worked at a magazine, and I left New York shortly after arriving. I moved back to Raleigh, I became a flight attendant. My timeline shifted.
However, my friends around me were getting engaged, buying houses, registering for stand mixers and fine china and fancy salad bowls. I went to bridal showers on Saturday mornings and engagement parties on Saturday night. After the weddings came the baby showers.
And still, there I was. Single, not really mingling.
There were times, before an engagement party or wedding, where I would call my mom and ask if I could fake the flu or gastric distress in order to get out of showing up at another party alone. I felt embarrassed, and lonely, and, most acutely, I felt behind in life.
There’s something that therapists talk about a lot called the “Geographic Cure.” It’s when people think that by getting the hell out of dodge, they’ll become a whole new person, cured of whatever was getting them down in their previous location.
I was a huge fan of the geographic cure. For the past ten years, when the goings have gotten tough, I’ve packed up and left. I’ve moved to different places, fully expecting to become a sparkly new person in my new city.
But the months leading up to my thirtieth started flying by, and it really made me think about that plan I had – the plan that was causing so much anxiety and embarrassment. That random, arbitrary plan I made that mapped out how my life should be. That plan I made when I was barely a teenager, and didn’t know anything at all about life, or love, or anything really.
I mapped out my life when I was thirteen years old. When I was thirteen, I also thought PT Cruisers were the coolest cars in the world, and my AIM screenname was Sketchy1989. I thought N*SYNC was the shit, and I was absolutely, without question, going to marry JC Chasez. When I was twenty five, of course.
Why had I, in time, realized how ridiculous all of that was, but still held on to the plan I made back then for my perfect life? Why was I still thinking I needed a baby or a wedding registry in order to be complete?
Now, I’m thirty years old and so, so single. But I’m no longer punishing myself for not having it all together, all of the time. I go to my friend’s engagement parties solo, without the embarrassment or anxiety that used to hang over my head. I have a job that I love, and the work I do is acknowledged and appreciated. I want certain things in my future, sure, but right now I’m happy with what I have.
I think, just this once, the geographic cure actually worked out for me. I’m still me – I still spend some Friday nights binge-watching Netflix alone. I still find it difficult to really put myself out there, and while I have all my friends in NYC, I don’t have a ton of friends in Montclair. I’m getting there, slowly but surely.
Could I have figured all of this out in Raleigh or Charlotte? I have no doubt. I go back to Raleigh and feel a pull at the bottom of my heart. I see my friends and their husbands and wives, and their babies, and their new businesses and I want to stay.
I always want to stay, but I always go. I may be thirty, but I still don’t think I’ve figured out what I want to do, or who I want to be, when I grow up. I’ve got more to learn, especially about myself. Now that I’ve freed myself of timelines, I’m going to take my time figuring things out.
But, if you’re reading this JC Chasez, I’m still down to get married. Just gonna throw that out there.