on screaming into the void

The amount of times I’ve heard the phrase “I can’t believe you’re thirty!” since my birthday in august is both a point of pride and one of the most embarrassing things I hear on a regular basis. Currently I assistantly manage a coffee shop in texas and am doing my best to follow my creative urges and the dreams I put on the back burner for the entirety of my twenties. There was recently a tik tok making the rounds where a girl is asking for more visibility for people who are thirty and starting over – I had a conversation with a friend at dinner a few nights ago and she brought up how the two of us are getting older and made it seem like it was the beginning of the end.

Maybe even five years ago, starting over as a thirty year old was a big deal that required a herculean effort, but these days the entire idea of what constitutes as a “real adult” doesn’t even seem to matter. The pandemic has clearly redefined what working and living looks like to the average person, and there have to be more fresh 30-somethings that find themselves in situations similar to mine. The amount of adults living in their parents homes while they figure out their next move has increased, and most people I knew when I was in my early twenties still had no idea what they wanted, other than a steady paycheck. I am incredibly privileged, and have parents that not only had a spare room for me when I needed one but are also incredibly supportive of my pursuits. Not everyone is afforded that luxury, which I think is where a significant amount of the herculean worrying comes from in terms of starting over at the decrepit age of thirty. All of the people I’ve met who have started over, or changed their minds about who they are and what they wanted to do have all had a similar passion for shedding the skin of the people that they used to be.

So many of us get stuck in the mindsets of an out of date american dream. Getting a degree of some sort, starting a family, and buying a house are no longer the measurements used to define what it means to live and exist as an adult in the world. Some of the most wonderfully creative, beautiful people I have met have all fallen into the pattern of the nine to five however, and sacrificed a piece of their destiny in order to survive in the hellscape we were gifted by those that came before. Art is not being created because the working system that encroaches on people’s souls has obliterated the ability for so many to have time and space to create their art outside of working hours. We are expected to keep to a schedule that no longer has a definite place with newer generations.

I know most people have anxiety about turning thirty and not accomplishing what they feel like they should have. Comparison may be the thief of joy but it is hard to not think of the boxes of photos that exist with pictures of your parents looking young and having their second kid by the time they hit thirty. There’s tons of jokes about getting older and having to settle down and have the entirety of your life figured out, but as a person who wasted a significant portion of their twenties I was so excited to be thirty. I still am excited for my thirties, no matter how many dinosaur jokes I hear in a week.

When my best friend from high school got married, I opened my maid of honor speech by saying that I hadn’t gotten nervous about giving the speech or being her maid of honor until people started asking me how nervous I was after the ceremony. That sentiment applies to how I feel about turning thirty – I was never nervous about it until people started legitimately asking how nervous I was to get old. Thirty isn’t old by a long shot, ask anyone over the age of seventy and I’ll bet they’ll back me up. The world is so much bigger, so much more interesting and beautiful when you release expectations of your life based on other people’s fear.

To end this scream I’ll say this – to anyone terrified to start the next decade without fulfilling all the dreams they had shoved down their throats just know that starting over is natural. Death and rebirth are the only constants in life and the void will always listen, even when you get hoarse.