My friend Megan woke up and chose violence yesterday when she texted: “How’s the last week of your 30s?” For the record, I’ve just wrapped up the first year of my thirties. On Friday, I’ll be 31 years old. *Exhales.*
My face is wrinkle-free (shout out to good genes, melanin, and Neutrogena), but I am now officially closer to 40 than to 20. Most days, I still feel 19. The last year of my twenties — the one I wanted to soak in with travel, adventures, and debauchery — was stolen by a pandemic that is still ruining my birthday plans two years later. I suppose I shouldn’t complain. I couldn’t imagine being 10 years old, or 16, or 20, or even 25 right now. It’s undeniable that, during a global pandemic, being age 30, childless, and able to work from home is an enviable position.
Still, I sometimes can’t help feeling like the past two years have sped up life for my peers and somehow left me further behind. I’ve watched so many close friends either get married, or have a child, or buy a house in the suburbs. Of course, they would have inevitably hit those milestones, with or without the End of Times looming in the distance. But it does feel like COVID has been the catalyst for retreating cozily into coupledom. During those three glorious spring months — when we ditched our masks and shot mRNA into our arms — I wanted to wear my skimpiest sundress and dance in the streets. My partnered friends had other ideas: “I think we’ll probably just stay home” remained the chorus of 2021.
So, I tip-toed back into The World on my own. If 2020 was the year of surviving, 2021 was the year of reemerging. I remembered how much I love meeting new people and forced myself — excuse my #Girlboss — to lean in to the small moments of joy that I’ll never be able to share on Instagram: kissing a stranger on a beach in Barcelona; biking through Park Slope; becoming a regular at my neighborhood coffee shop; eating the perfect bowl of tagliatelle with a glass of cabernet and a book at Cry Baby Pasta; flirting with the bartender at Royal Sushi; watching an old movie with a new friend and whispering, “You too? I thought I was the only one who thought that.”
This year was also filled with grief. I hugged my grandmother for the final time. My sister moved 3,000 miles away. I broke up with friends. A guy broke my heart. But I tried my best to — as Sarah Silverman put it — “grab joy where I could get it.” I said “yes” — to people, and places, and experiences — even when it was scary. No one’s going to buy me a KitchenAid mixer for that. But at 31, I think I’m exactly where I’d like to be.
Cheers.
Such beautiful writing! I’ll chip in on your Kitchen Aid mixer (something I’ve somehow managed to live without)