It's weird enough to realize that you've been alive for three whole decades -- and though there are dashes of vanity here and there (like my recent horrified realization that I've got whispers of crow's feet, or the creeping disfigurement developing in the joint of my right big toe), I'm struggling to really comprehend that I've been alive that long. I'm 30! I have been alive for three whole decades! Three whole decades! How did I get here?
But what's far weirder is that I've already spent one of those decades here in the greater Boston area. I've spent one third of my life away from my family, my home state, the little city where my grandparents provided piles of juicy tomatoes in the summer, the swath of the south where I frolicked on the shores of North Myrtle Beach every summer and the name Mandy is a three-syllable word. I've spent one third of my life letting go of my religious upbringing -- without much resentment, thankfully, but letting go nonetheless. I've spent one third of my life wrestling equally with the part of myself that is an independent feminist and the part of myself that longs for a family of my own. I've spent one third of my life learning how to live with people who are not my family -- or at least, not by blood. I've spent one third of my life struggling to balance work and play (and failing most of the time). I've spent one third of my life slowly and quietly acknowledging to myself that although I really like boys, as I always have, well… I also like girls. I've spent one third of my life battling a crippling case of Impostor Syndrome, unable to call myself an artist or actively pursue my creative goals, and yet also unable to deny that maybe, just maybe, I could do it if I really tried, and maybe, just maybe, the people who tell me I have talent aren't totally full of shit.
I've been alive. Alive! for three. Whole. Decades. How did I get here?
And where am I going, now? Those days when the lines between my dreams and my reality get oh-so-blurry, I try to wake myself up, as when your alarm clock intrudes on a deep sleep and you can't get your brain completely out of the fog and you don't know if it's been minutes or hours or days since you last comprehended what was really happening around you. I fail at that, too, and even as I write this it's hard to say for certain whether I'm asleep or awake. When I was little my dreams involved flying and underwater mermaid lands and meeting magical creatures (including Satan himself, who was actually quite fascinating and a pretty genial guy); these days there's a lot of yelling, a lot of running, a lot of hyperventilating, and the line between sleeping and waking gets blurrier by the minute.
And the lines separating what I have from what I think I have from what I think I should have from what I wish I had… I couldn't even begin to map those out. I'm smart enough to know that I have a hell of a lot to be grateful for, but then some days, well, some days, I think about my post-traumatic stress disorder and my anxiety and my seizures and my failure to meet anyone's expectations of me -- and I wonder, loudly, fretfully, how did I get here?
Those first two decades of my life revolved almost entirely around pleasing other people. Oh, sure, I had my moments of rebellion -- various piercings, minor deviations from fashion norms, moving up the east coast, underage drinking, smooching the wrong boys -- but I always felt a nagging desperation to gain approval from someone, but without putting myself out there too much. The risks were always small, and so were the rewards; so it went with my writing, by which I gained high praise in English classes and high fives from peers but from which I ran like mad when the stakes became too high. I knew that the "real" writers, the "real" artists, weren't afraid to fall down on their faces from time to time because in order to succeed you had to fail and keep going away. The failing, the falling, the embarrassment wasn't worth it in my mind. And so I stopped trying. And so I still failed, but silently, voluntarily, on my own terms, and so I told myself it was ok and it was what I wanted.
And so the heart of the matter is this: The real sadness and frustration that surrounds turning 30 isn't about vanity. It's about realizing that I've been alive for three whole decades and I feel like everything that I really wanted slipped through my fingers, or maybe what I thought I wanted wasn't what I wanted after all, or maybe I have no fucking clue what I want and I'm doomed to wander this life dissatisfied and disappointed in myself. It's about realizing that I've spent three whole decades fundamentally confused about what I'm really capable of.
It's about knowing that the one thing I know is that I know nothing.
How did I get here -- but the real question is, where do I go?
