It’s a big birthday year for a lot of my friends and family – the momentous 3-0. Kerryn’s already over that hill, Diana follows tomorrow, my sisters and J are right behind.

I remember approaching my thirtieth birthday with such intense, overwhelming anxiety. For the two years leading up to it, it felt like my life was spinning out of control – one long, protracted panic attack of stomach-churning and crushing weight. I was adrift – all the things that I had built my identity around were falling away, and suddenly I was *running*out*of*time*. It was one thing to fuck around in my twenties – ditching jobs, juggling debt, uprooting, making excuses, changing elements of my life as often as i changed my haircolour – because that’s what the twenties are for. But it was quite another to suddenly run up against the end of a decade and have little more to show for it than when I started. When you fuck up in your 20s, you can chalk it up to a learning experience. yet being a fuck up in your thirties… well, people are much more judgemental when you’re beginning the long approach to middle age.

And so I did what any sane person would do: I freaked.

It was like watching a car wreck in slow motion. Suddenly single after a decade long relationship, I threw myself wildly into dating. Sadly, I really sucked at that. Relationships I’m great at – dating, not so much. I tried exploring grad school – only to bomb at that as well. I took the gre and went down in flames of confusion and shattered self-esteem. In desperation, I decided to move to London – only to then have to purge everthing I owned and move back in with my mother. I threw out cappucino makers, juicers, sofas and treadmills, and went to living in a bedroom with two suitcases of clothes and my neice’s hamster. Hardly the life of a responsible adult.

In the weeks before I turned thirty, I was alone, emptyhanded, broke, working at a mindless job, and living with my mother. I was wallowing (drowning?) in self-pity.

And then I actually turned thirty. And suddenly, miraculously, i just stopped caring about what anyone else thought. This giant, bleak cloud of dread and self-loathing that i’d been towing around with me for so goddamned long – it completely disappeared, as if by magic. I spent my thirtieth birthday (christmas day) in new orleans with a friend, getting completely wasted for a week. and even for all the hangovers, it felt like being born again. i was happy and lighthearted and full of excitement and possibility – i couldn’t remember the last time i’d felt so alive. i had a *personality* again. i may have been the world’s most pathetic thirty year old ever, but i really couldn’t give a damn. in a moment of clarity, i realised the the only thing that mattered to me, was that i was *living* my life, on my own terms. seeking out new challenges, trying new things, never growing stagnant. i was doing exactly what i wanted to do, and if i couldn’t be happy about that, then i would never be happy about anything.

and i remember wondering why no one *told me* that that’s what happens. that you come into your own sense of self-assurance. that everything you’ve been through to that point, every miserable experience you survived, was for this – this understanding of what lies at the core of your innermost heart, the things that mattered to your soul, and how they shape your life. how *you* shape your life, because of them. and to their credit, they probably did try to tell me that – but it’s hard to be open to optimism when you’re paralysed by fear. it’s a scary thing, taking charge of your own destiny, deciding to be responsible for your own happiness. because when you take responsibility for your happiness and success, the corollary is that you also have to take responsibility for fear and failure. no more excuses, welcome to adulthood.

but the possibilities for happiness are limitless.

this turning-30 revelation didn’t fix my life (i was still broke, single, etc.) – but it absolutely did change it.

and i know that turning thirty probably doesn’t have that same effect on everyone – i certainly hope not everyone was plagued with existential doubt the way i was. but i do hope that everyone gets a chance to come to that same realisation sooner, rather than later. that they don’t waste years of their life waiting for happiness to land in their lap, but seize it, make it their own, take charge of joy.

that’s my birthday wish for them this year.

res – they say vision

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