I turned thirty recently. I would like to say that I handled this milestone with maturity, grace, and the quiet confidence of a woman who has finally figured out what she's doing. I did not. Instead, I spent a disproportionate amount of time thinking about the fact that I am no longer in my twenties, which feels unnecessarily dramatic when you say it out loud.
I'm thirty. There. I've said it. It still sounds like somebody else's age.
Twenty-nine felt fine. Twenty-nine was still part of the twenties, complete with a reassuring little cushion around it where you could say, "I'm in my late twenties," and somehow feel vaguely youthful and appropriately vague. Thirty has no such ambiguity. Thirty is just thirty. There is no hiding behind clever phrasing, no rounding down, and, perhaps most importantly, no accompanying envelope containing the adult wisdom I had apparently been waiting for. I checked. Nothing. No instructions, no certificate, no tiny booklet entitled Congratulations! You Are Now Thirty. Here Is Everything You Need to Know.
Which is unfortunate, because I have several pressing questions. What am I supposed to be doing with my pension? How often should I actually clean the oven? Is everyone else good at managing money, or are we all just moving numbers around in banking apps and hoping for the best? When does someone teach you how to properly understand taxes, mortgages and the process of buying a house? And at what age are you supposed to stop having absolutely no idea what you're going to make for dinner?
I had assumed that by thirty, adulthood would feel more definite, more settled, more me. Instead, I mostly feel like myself, but with slightly more admin.
This is perhaps the strangest thing about getting older. When you're younger, you imagine ages as destinations. At twenty, thirty seems impossibly old; at twenty-five, it suddenly feels alarmingly close. Somewhere in all of that, you quietly create a picture of who you'll be when you get there. I had one, not consciously, perhaps, but somewhere in the back of my mind there was a version of thirty-year-old me who had everything sorted. She knew exactly what she wanted, had a clear career trajectory, was financially sensible, and possessed healthy habits. She probably went to bed at a reasonable time, exercised regularly, drank enough water, and didn't spend twenty minutes scrolling through her phone while complaining she had no time. She was, frankly, exhausting.
And now that I'm thirty, I realise I don't actually want to be her.
Because the older I get, the more I realise that a lot of the things I thought I was supposed to have figured out were never things anyone actually figures out. People just get better at pretending. Some people have learned how to sound confident while Googling the answer later; others simply own matching Tupperware. This doesn't mean they understand life. It just means they have matching Tupperware.
I think part of my crisis has been the feeling that thirty represents a deadline, as though my twenties were the experimental period and now I'm supposed to have produced the final version. But life doesn't work like that. There isn't a point where you stop changing, and thank God for that, imagine being permanently stuck with every opinion you had at twenty-two. I've changed, my priorities have changed, and the things I want from life look entirely different now. Perhaps that is what growing up actually is: not becoming certain, but becoming more comfortable with changing your mind.
I've also realised that turning thirty makes you look backwards in ways you don't expect, mentally counting what you've done, where you've been, and what didn't happen. There are versions of myself I feel proud of, and versions I would quite like to sit down with for a cup of tea and gently ask what on earth they were thinking. But I don't want to spend my thirties trying to make up for my twenties. That feels like another way of putting myself under pressure, turning a new decade into yet another checklist of milestones I am supposed to hit in the correct order: travel, invest, exercise, continue building the career you started in your twenties, buy a house, have a baby, don't have a baby, buy another house because you've outgrown the first one, start a business, learn a language, go to Pilates, drink green juice.
I'm tired just writing that.
Maybe thirty doesn't need to be impressive. Maybe it doesn't need to look like anything in particular. Maybe it can just be the decade where I stop apologising for needing rest, where I become more comfortable saying no, and where I care less about what my life looks like from the outside and more about how it actually feels to live it. A comfortable home, people I love, a quiet morning, a good cup of tea, and a body that I listen to instead of constantly negotiating with.
The biggest surprise of turning thirty is realising I don't actually feel particularly different. I still overthink, I still change my mind, and I still occasionally eat dinner at an inappropriate time because I forgot about it until I was already hungry. The only difference is that now I am doing all of that in my thirties, which feels both terrifying and strangely comforting.
Because maybe there isn't a magical moment when you finally feel like an adult. Maybe adulthood isn't a destination; it's just repeatedly discovering that nobody knows what they're doing and carrying on anyway.
So, hello, thirty. I'm not behind, I'm not late, and I'm not a failed version of the person I thought I'd be. I'm just thirty. And, for the first time, I'm beginning to think that might be enough.