The Last Month of My 20s

Today marks exactly one month until my birthday. The Big 30.

This is the age everyone warns you about, the one that supposedly makes people spiral. I honestly never thought it would get me. 20 was bad enough; that was my midlife crisis. I was never the kid rushing toward adulthood. I looked at the stress, the bills, the insincerity, and thought: yeah, I’ll pass. Which is why officially leaving my teens knocked me sideways.

I had no friendships in my teens. I never went out, never drank, never had the sloppy stupid fun you’re supposed to burn through while figuring yourself out. While all the other kids were sneaking beers and kissing strangers they’d forget the next day, I was busy stuck in my room, vainly attempting to dissect the meaning of life, raging against religion, seething at what I saw as people’s total lack of critical thought.

I had plenty of “formative experiences,” sure, but they were heavy, inward, obsessive. Not exactly playful. And the whole time, whether I admitted it or not, the absence of those “normal” rites of passage weighed on me. Culture makes sure you feel them, even if you roll your eyes and pretend you couldn’t care less.

Today I am in the same cage I built at 12, when I turned inward and never fully came back out. I know more clearly now what I am missing, as I have had tastes of the outward life, of joy, of connection… but keeping them has been quite the battle. I did not ever expect to still be here at 30, struggling to hold on to the very elemental things that make life worthwhile. My Maslow pyramid looks more like a tent wearing a top hat.

When I was about 14, I worshipped Kurt Cobain. I read his journals, soaked up his bitterness. Sylvia Plath also felt uncomfortably familiar and, let me tell you, when I first found out that we were both born October 27 at 2:10 p.m., it felt like a cosmic message. Yes, finally, a confirmation: I will die young! I saw myself as the tragic misunderstood artist, set to hate the world, make my mark, and be gone by 30. At first I idolized 27, wanting to join the greats, but then I shifted the deadline to 30. That’s way more realistic. Why would I not have won a couple Oscars and a Pulitzer by 30? What am I, a fucking loser?!

But then something unexpected happened. I think it first started when I read all of van Gogh’s letters at 16-17 years old, and his love for life, for the world, for people, started slowly dismantling my rage. As the years went by, I found myself willing to be present more often, putting myself in situations where the so-called typical experiences of being in my early 20s became possible. I momentarily had fun, in a way that hadn’t quite happened in over a decade. And that appreciation grew violently - life itself became unbearable in its beauty. The sky, the dirt under my feet, historic fingerprints on doorknobs, voices I would only ever hear once. All of it, overwhelming to the point of nausea.

I fell in love with the world, but with that came the ache of seeing it ruined. Animals mistreated, the Earth exploited, wars and suffering everywhere, and my goddamned tied hands.

My hands are tied too by my mind and body. Anxiety, agoraphobia, days stuck in bed, months stuck inside. A nervous system that fires alarms at nothing. A body that has been refusing to be normal for so long that I sometimes want to intentionally self-destruct to give it what it seems to want so badly.

But here I am, at 29. I have missed so much of what life is supposed to be, and I will likely miss much more. Maybe whole categories of life will remain closed to me – me, so desperate to eat all the figs, so desperate to fight against my facticities, so frozen by what I call my impossibilitude. How ironic.

But I am also proud. Proud that I have kept moving, even in tiny ways, in the small spaces I can carve. Proud that I have turned pain into something visible, however incomplete.

If life keeps me here, I want my 30s to be for color and joy and dances with the absurd. I want to spend this last month tearing down whatever parts of the wall I can, and then attempt a jump outward. To make the art that has been sitting in my hard drives, to transform more of the pain and the wonder into something shareable.

To make peace with every version of myself and carry their best forward with me.