30-Year-Old Musings

I have been doing a lot of inward reflection in the months leading up to my 30th birthday. 30 isn’t even some big milestone birthday like 16 or 21, but I am aiming to make it one for myself. I’ve spent a good portion of my life doing a lot of worrying: about how people perceive me, about my career, about if I’m being a good friend/daughter/sister/wife/employee, about my body image, about finances, the list goes on and on. This year, I’m aiming to cut the negativity once and for all.

Last year, as I’m sure many people experienced, my mental health was in shambles. I was sobbing multiple days a week, feeling like I was in a fog that I was completely stuck in. I was having PTSD-related nightmares in which I would wake up and couldn’t catch my breath. I experienced delusions, like if I just drove to the grocery store, I would swear that I hit a pedestrian on my way there, even if there was no one walking in the road (I later learned this is a common trauma response). A year ago, I decided to start going back to therapy and it was the best decision I have made in a long time. It felt so good to have that one hour a week to just get out all the jumbled-up mess in my head. It made me realize that it’s ok to feel the way I am and I’m not unfixable. I had myself convinced I was just going to be damaged forever, but now I feel a renewed sense of hope and fire.

As a kid, I was constantly pressuring myself in school and extracurriculars and I would have a total meltdown if I got a less than perfect grade or messed up a routine (which I completely blew at a dance competition, and I still haven’t fully gotten over lol). I’m much the same way now with my job. I hate when I make a mistake at work, and I will worry about it for hours after thinking everyone hates me. I’ve gotten better lately at correcting it and moving on, but it took me a long time to get there. I still have a really hard time just letting go and relaxing when I need to and I’m trying to be kinder to myself if I’ve had a rough day. It’s ok if I want to skip working out and cleaning and veg for 3 hours on the couch if I need it. My mind is always “go, go, go” and there’s no shame in trying to quiet that every once in a while.

Along with these pressures, I also developed a nasty eating disorder in my adolescence. I remember always being around family members that were dieting or talking negatively about certain foods or their body. When I was 10, I had a family member tell me if I just lost 10 pounds, I would be “perfect”. That fucked me up more than I thought at the time, because at that time I believed it. Then at the same time, I had other family members saying flippant and unhelpful things like “just eat a cheeseburger”. When I was 16, I weighed 98 pounds. Everyone was saying how good I looked because as we all know, in the early-mid-2000s, being skinny was goals. I can’t even fathom that now. It took me a long time to get healthy and change my attitude about food. David was super helpful in that part of my life. When we met in college, I was still struggling with that same eating disorder. We would go out to eat together and it made things less scary. Now I love cooking with him and Emily. I’m lucky to have both in my support system.

Another thing I always had a fear of was disappointing my family. When I was a senior in college, I realized I didn’t want to be a news anchor like I thought I did when I was graduating high school. Everyone in my family was constantly asking about what news station/TV-related jobs I had applied for, and I didn’t want to say that I didn’t feel the same way about that career choice anymore. I briefly did work in that field after college, but then was not asked back at the end of that summer. I worked multiple jobs for a while, feeling like a complete failure. I landed a job doing digital advertising and I realized I loved it. But still, I got questions like, “Do you ever think you want to go back to TV?” “Do you miss it?” But I found a job that makes me happy. That’s all I ever wanted in a career, was to be happy. I still love what I do years later.

This is where things get a little dark. I’m prouder than I have ever been to be a woman, but for a long time, it made me scared. When you are assaulted by someone you trusted at a young age and sexually harassed at multiple jobs, your confidence is broken. You start to think that something is wrong with you. What am I doing to get this attention? It must be my fault. I’m doing something to make men react this way. I can’t wear or say what I want because I’ll get unwanted attention and put myself in danger. Fuck all of that. I will not shrink myself down to a tiny bite-sized piece of myself, you can choke. I am a survivor, like so many other women. I don’t say any of this for sympathy, I want to share my feelings because it makes things easier for people who haven’t found that right time to share their experience yet. I will not be quiet about issues that matter. Not just sexual crimes, but for justice for black/brown/Asian lives as well as LGBTQ+ lives. We have too many resources now to be ignorant and silent. It took me sharing my own story with people I love to realize I need to speak up about other issues as well.

I get asked about having kids a lot, and I fully believe that I am my best self how I am right now. I have the best husband, a great mom and dad, a BFF for a sister, the cutest dog, and a group of my best friends that I have had since I was a kid. I know that gets judged by family, but honestly, I just don’t care anymore. I am so happy for my friends that have kids, they are wonderful parents, but it’s ok if my story is different. Some people think it’s selfish to not have a family, but I think it’s more selfish to have kids when you have no desire to. It’s not fair. Who knows, my mind could change in the next few years, and that’s ok too.

So as I sit here ready to officially be 30 in an hour, I’m excited. I’m excited to finally start living how I want to. So what if I haven’t always done things the traditional way? For example, David and I did everything a little different (got married younger than a lot of people we know, rented for 4 years, then bought a house) and you know what? I wouldn’t have changed a thing. I’m going to continue trusting my own intuition, because life has been pretty damn good so far :)