I am 30 and that is enough.
I turned 30 last week.
After countless “almosts” and “about to bes,” I just am, and it feels pleasantly climactic. The pursuit of simplifying my life is now cemented by a shiny, new decade—the reins of the status quo a little looser, pinky swears a little tighter (for the sake of youthful optimism). Thirty has long hovered like a slow-opening portal to elsewhere; having been conceived the night of UFO sightings over New York in the winter of 1990, it feels like I’m finally home.
Thirty is the first socially acceptable year to contextualize life around aging. No one wants to hear some misguided 27-year-old call herself “old and washed” for skipping Franky Bradley’s to watch Grey’s Anatomy reruns. Thirty gives newfound leeway to talk like that… because it knows you won’t. Take my last place of employment for example: the first hospital system to offer patients refunds for their care, modeled after retail like Starbucks and Amazon; our CEO was on every national news channel talking about how once you give people the option, they’re more attuned to gratitude and apt to refuse it. That’s 30. It hits you that you’re younger and more vivacious than you were at 22 and thus you don’t seek a refund from the passage of time. I’m not skipping the bar because I’m “old and washed.” I’m skipping the bar because I don’t feel like going, and that is enough. Thirty helps you understand “enough.”
I spent all of my 20s feeling like I wasn’t “enough,” hadn’t done “enough.” I took the GRE immediately after undergrad, certain I was going to marriage & family therapy school at Syracuse, my academic advisor’s alma mater. I believed I had the chops to be the next Esther Perel—a world-renowned psychoanalyst, researcher, and author who’d help the masses understand the nuances of romance. But my life became a cycle of party and delay. Years passed and suddenly I was 25 reading You Are a Badass by Jen Sincero on my porch in Bloomsburg, thinking endless possibilities were behind the deadbolted door of my own devices; I, too, could be a girlboss if I buckled down and traded country roads for a big city. I didn’t know where “enough” lived, but I figured I was bound to find it somewhere between York Street and Washington Avenue.
And so I landed a job and moved to Philadelphia where the strangest thing happened slowly, and then all at once: I became more anxious and unhappy than I’d ever been. With something new to romanticize around every corner, how could that be? I bought the laptop and the camera and started a blog. I made a motley crew of friends and had good sex. But despite the shows at Johnny Brenda’s, and the foie gras at Bistrot La Minette, and the way the cobblestone in Society Hill looks after rain, and all the Renoirs at the Barnes Foundation, and the used bookstore cats rubbing against my leg, and the spontaneous Tuesday happy hours that stretched into infinite midnight, unwavering feelings of letdown left me fraught in a 300 sq. ft. studio. My sister died. My best friend died. I had no money and a job that bored me. I had to start redefining “enough” in a way that was independent of material success. I had to see the things I labeled “distractions” and “escapism”—the things that made me hate myself and resent Philadelphia—for their beauty, and make art of it.
“Enough” means “as much or as many as required.” But as a state of being, “enough” is more than vaguely quantified sufficiency. One doesn’t assert “I am enough” with anything less than their entire chest. To be “enough” is to be warmed by revelations of the self that bridge past and present. It’s examining the different versions of my identity, seeing who still shows up today, and offering each one the same loving embrace.
I am enough because I still wear high ponytails and big hoops.
I am enough because I still forget an umbrella.
I am enough because I still go out of my way to justify expensive purchases that I ended up hating, or boring nights out that ruined my next day.
I am enough because I still get nervous driving fast in the left lane; one hard sneeze and it’s over.
I am enough because I still love skateboarders.
I am enough because I still pray in peril despite promptly distancing myself from the Catholic church after 5th grade.
I am enough because I still feel more interesting with a book in my hand.
I am enough because I still paint my nails blue and love Top Ramen.
I am enough because I still have browsing tabs open to three different programs at three different grad schools, and can’t see the harm in rolling the dice.
I am enough because I still listen to Skrillex at max volume.
I am enough because I still start fights over imaginary scenarios.
I am enough because I still worship the sun.
I am enough because I still miss summer deadlines to engage in said sun worshipping.
I am enough because I still plan entire days around watching the sun set.
I am enough because I still wear crop tops and take nudes that no one will ever see.
I am enough because I still smoke when I drink and spend the whole next day Googling “lung cancer symptoms.”
I am enough because I still use everything as a vessel for butter.
I am enough because I still check the mirror after one workout and expect results; ninety percent of the time I can trick myself into seeing them.
I am enough because I still love PDA.
I am enough because I still maintain delusional confidence toward my future success as a writer.
I’m so young that all of my dimensions still feel soft in my hands, shapeless and unhardened by the world. But I’m old enough to find a stillness of moment that heretofore eluded me. Discerning the temporary from the lasting, I take it all in.
Today is my dad’s birthday, 8 days after mine, and 8 days before my sister’s. When I wished him a happy birthday, he replied, “just glad to be home.” It’s amazing the way “enough” manifests in different seasons of life. I like to think my “enough” is, too, “just glad to be home”—home being a new decade in my own skin. It may be another 20 years before I find the perfect metaphor for aging, or write anything about wrinkles that Nora Ephron hasn’t already, but that’s ok. “Roadhouse Blues” just came on shuffle and I’m reminded that “the future’s uncertain and the end is always near.”
In honor of my 30th birthday and the first birthday of Broke But Moisturized on Substack, you can get a year’s paid subscription for $30 now through the end of July. Thank you for supporting my independent writing journey.