I just got here
Thirty, flirty, and thriving
For as long as I can remember, my mom told me the best age was 27: “You’re not as kiddish, but you’re still young and good-looking. It’s nice. I miss it.” Hearing this got me excited. I looked forward to it. 27 became the unofficial age of ✨womanhood✨. But being me, I mentally added a few extra details she hadn’t mentioned, like how I’d need to have a penthouse, be an IG model, and have been married for at least two years by then. I expected to be unstoppable and at my prettiest.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t.
By the time that age arrived, I was serial dating, just as broke as 17, and still couldn’t color-match my foundation to my neck. None of my fantastical ideas came to fruition, leaving me feeling cheated and confused.
With the age of my dreams being a bust, I sat on the stage that is life with my arms crossed and bottom lip poking out. I wasn’t ready for what was next—what I had to look forward to now that my youth and prime were “almost over.” For many women, ages 28 and 29 are reserved for premature grief—a prep stage for all the things you’re going to lose. I was bereft and floated through those years in a fog.
The message that women are worthless and ugly past a certain age was everywhere. Millennials aggressively meme’d about the ticking clock, trying to laugh instead of cry. And I started to believe it—that I had one foot in the grave, and 30 was when I’d lose control of the other foot and tumble into my final resting place.
One day, in a friend's kitchen, on the tail-end of 29, I picked up a supplement from her counter. I asked what it was, and she replied that once you hit 30, your collagen production decreases, and the best thing you can do is add that powder to your morning coffee. I was horrified. What? Collagen? Like the stuff in face creams marketed to crumbly old ladies? How could that be a 30-year-old’s problem? Already? Ingesting potions and powders to avoid transforming into a witch with furrowed skin, holding a poisoned apple?
To make matters worse, I also had a humming internal panic about where my husband was and why he hadn’t appeared after 10 years of dating the entire metropolitan valley. By that point, I had just about resigned to dying alone. I started avoiding holidays because I couldn’t bear another family function without news of matrimony on the horizon. There were only so many times I could claim to be “working on myself” or say, “I’m really busy,” before I saw pity in their eyes. I felt like the last piece of fruit in the bin at the grocery store: bruised and unwanted, destined for the trash.
My unease led me to consider ignoring my 30th altogether. If anyone asked, I would laugh it off and change the subject. I thought that if I laid down real flat and didn’t make a sound, God might skip me and tap someone else on the head with the aging wand.
But despite my best efforts to stop time with my mind, the days continued to pass, stealing what was left of my twenties one sunrise at a time. I spent the night prior to my “death” quiet and drawn, staring past things à la Girl, Interrupted.
Surprisingly, the next morning, I felt fine. No geriatric ailments appeared overnight—no cataracts, no osteoporosis. When I left the house, no one on the street pointed and laughed, catching the stench of 30 on me. That day, I got crab legs for dinner and then went to bed. As it turned out, the occasion was entirely uneventful.
The next night, my friends greeted me at a surprise party at a local brewery. I was surrounded by joy, love, and alcohol (my favorite party guest). But even amidst the celebration, I couldn’t shake my self-consciousness. A friend brought a gift, and scrawled on the wrapping in thick, conspicuous permanent marker was the millennial adage, “30 FLIRTY AND THRIVING!” Instead of feeling thankful, I was furious. I was hyper-vigilant about hiding the paper, determined that the internet would never know my dirty secret.
I saw my grandmother shortly after that night because she wanted to take me for lunch. Always a wooden, haughty woman, she said happy birthday flatly, uninspired, like it was an obligation. When I thanked her, she followed up with, “So, how old are you?”
When I offered the number, her head twitched disapprovingly, and her eyes widened. In her thick Louisianan accent, she practically yelled, “Gooood lawdddd! You is OLD!”
She meant that shit with her whole chest.
In my chest, though, fury blazed—because I was getting my worst fear confirmed. I mean, it couldn’t be. An 85-year-old woman calling her 30-year-old granddaughter fucking old.
And she wasn’t even being funny. Coming from a time when women were married and pushing out child number four by age 23, I was an anomaly in her eyes—an aging, useless sack of shit with no husband, no family, no money in the middle of Miami.
Within a few months of that cursed birthday, I came across the most incredible source of validation: SZA. On YouTube, she talked about how she had just turned 30 and didn’t feel any way about it. I sat, rapt with attention, listening to someone I thought would be in the same self-conscious, insecure state as me, saying she didn’t mind one bit.
What stuck with me most was when she said, “I just got here.” She was talking about her next decade, stepping deeper into adulthood and all the learning and growing to come. She flat-out told the world: I’M THIRTY, AND I AM EXCITED ABOUT IT, AND ALSO, I DON’T FUCKING CARE! (A beautiful contradiction.)
At that moment, I realized I wasn’t the problem: the narrative was. SZA’s unapologetic confidence wasn’t just inspiring; it was a reminder that my feelings of inadequacy weren’t born from my own thoughts. They were handed to me by a world terrified of women who dare to age.
I took how she felt and tucked it into myself. I held it, nurtured it, and eventually raised it up like Simba. “I AM NOT OLD! SZA SAID SO!” I shouted, “WE JUST GOT HERE!!!”
The crowd in my head cheered, and the self-loathing part of me that resented my own aging shrunk considerably.
And it turns out my thirtieth year was amazing. I spent it wrinkle-free, paid (I switched jobs and got a $10k salary increase), and living with the man of my dreams.
I didn’t change much as a person. Physically, emotionally, and mentally, I was still me—limber, idealistic, and fixated on the same distractions of my twenties (Taco Bell, alcohol, what Rihanna was up to).
Every fear about my life's “progress report” turned out to be unfounded. As it turns out, the world was being petty—with its terrible, untrue idea that thirty is the end of everything. I finally decided I wasn’t going to get bullied by society anymore. I decided that I was over it.
—M