this is 35

I wake up at 9am. Well, that’s not true—my alarm was set for 9am, but I woke up somewhere in the sevens because I can’t sleep in like I used to. I was hoping, though, that this day of all days would be different, the way we hope for something momentous on the anniversary of our birth simply because something momentous happened that first time.

The night before, I’d taken the students in my college seminar to my favorite restaurant in town, a Spanish tapas place that was considered a fancy date spot when I was in college. It was still considered a fancy date spot, I learned in relief.

My students were sweet. They asked the waitress for a birthday dessert and sang to me while a flan Catalan with a single flame was placed in front of me. I’d told them that I found people singing happy birthday to me deeply embarrassing, but they went ahead and did it anyway. I told them, I hate you, when the waitress appeared with the telltale flame.

I did not hate them. I was deeply embarrassed. I was happy.

Birthdays were major celebrations in college. We threw parties, or pregames, or at the very least sat in someone’s common room to cut up fat slices of Claire’s Lithuanian Coffee Cake with buttercream frosting. Turning 18 or 19 or 20 felt monumental—the last years of our teens, a new decade. 21 was a big one, for obvious reasons post-Prohibition. And 22 was the last year we could celebrate in college before the “real” world, so of course we celebrated.

Sometime after turning 30, I ran out of life events to look forward to. No graduation, no getting established in my career, no moving to a city I’d always wanted to live in. I had a terminal graduate degree; I was a Biglaw associate with good reviews and an instructor at a prestigious university; I lived in New York City like I’d always dreamt of.

I followed the carrot for so long, I never entertained the possibility of finally consuming the carrot and still feeling starved.

People waved new carrots in front of my face. Don’t you want to make partner? I thought of the partner who described the work as “unrelenting,” who told me they were “waiting for retirement.” Don’t you want to own your home? I thought of the endless discussions about home repair I’d been party to, the hours my homeowner friends dedicated to plumbing, grout, and rain gutters. Don’t you want a family? I thought of how unhappy and stressed my parents were when I lived under their roof, how much happier they seemed now without me to be responsible for.

The future did not bode well.

I tried to find things to look forward to. Was this why people started secret affairs? Began day trading? I, too, missed that feeling of being bowled over by the wondrous expanse and possibility of life. The next Princess Diana or Carolyn Bessette, the next big bet or GameStop short squeeze. Anything to combat the quicksand of adulthood, the shame of being lost in space despite having successfully launched.