What 30 Feels Like

The age of thirty has been a weird feel for me. It's like trying on new shoes and walking back and forth in them until it feels just right. Stopping to admire it in the mirror as you reflect on how it suits you well, but you need the right outfit to match. Thirty is kind of like that, but not so instantaneous. The feel for it comes slowly, as you bend and move in old bones that are supposed to feel new. Twenties were trying on every shoe you could find and thirty is finally embracing where you stand in them. It takes time and finesse, and I'm only a month and a half into it, but it has moved me in ways I am still uncovering.

So far I've seen relationships around me disintegrate and morph, dreams shaken, squashed and resurrected in a breath, paths broken and rebuilt with mild hopes and improbable maybes. I've spoken truths that were buried, along with a silent and weary voice - my heart fed up with the dirty footprints that have marked it repeatedly. I've had truths thrown back at me as twisted manipulations. I've felt false permanence only through the necessity I brought to others because of loyalty. I've tasted the bitterness of accepting half of my worth. I've felt the numbness of loss, not knowing how to cope for the loss of those I've known, those I thought I knew and those I wish I knew more but was not able to in this lifetime.

It hasn't been all bad at all, but the obstacles, as what applies to most people, have shaped me. I've accomplished things, I've failed at things, I've experienced and yet I have so much more to see. Like anything, the good and bad have molded my view simultaneously. I have seen thirty years of what seems like the first half of me, shed.

And like shedding old skin does, something has left me. I no longer want to hold on to what weighs me down, what buries me, what strips me of me. I can't allow what was in my space before, what has made me ache for understanding, for significance, for appreciation, for reciprocity. My cells can no longer exist in the disharmony that they once did; being shaken to reality will do that to you. Shaken into thirty - a long ride it's been, realizing that moments have built up to this new decade. My twenties have been a culmination of all the lessons I needed to learn and now thirty is what I must do. And do, I will.

But first I want to bask in the reality of change that is permeating my life. Maybe it's thirty, maybe it's just time for a shift. What I know is that age is not always a steady incline, nor a switch. We don't automatically change at one age versus the next. We don't constantly progress (unless we choose). It has bumps, turns, loops, valleys and mountain tops. It takes us where we need to go, when we are ready. "And if you ask me, I'm ready."

Thirty is magic. Not in the happily ever after, genie in the lamp, fairy godmother magical. It's just transformed me like magic does - into someone I don't exactly recognize, but into someone that's always been there, dormant - waiting to be revealed.

If you are approaching thirty, or even still in your twenties figuring out - I hope you find it too.