THIRTY
“Even if I don’t see it again
nor ever feel it
I know it is.
And that if once it hailed me
it ever does.
And so it is myself I want to turn in that direction.
Not as towards a place,
but it was a tilting within myself,
as one turns a mirror to flash the light to where
it isn’t.
I was blinded like that,
and swam in what shone at me.
Only able to endure it by being no one and so specifically myself I thought I’d die
from being loved like that.”
Hadley,
I’m sitting outside right now. At a table overlooking the rice paddies in the middle of the jungle in Bali. It’s 6:00am. I’m so awake it almost hurts.
Except it doesn’t. The warmth and the stillness and the magic of this foreign place are quieting the ache of my jet lagged bones. My happiness feels liquid. Like it’s seeping out of my skin, flirting with this bright tropical air.
It feels too early to eat. So instead of breakfast, I ordered every drink on the menu. Coffee, espresso, a pot of lemongrass ginger tea, a glass of cold coconut milk. I can’t fully describe how good this moment feels. Awake and unrushed, surrounded by the scent of frangipani flower and my abundance of hot and cold options — which are sitting in these beautiful white mugs, on this beautiful teak table. Small lovely things.
A tiny lizard keeps peaking his head out from behind the orchid that sits in a handmade vase. He scurries from mug to mug. Hiding and looking, hiding and looking. My new Balinese friend.
You would like him.
I’m finishing up the last days of my 30th year. In less than two weeks, I'll turn the unimportant age of 31. But I still have some time. Time to think about how I got here. Not here to the other side of this great big world. But here, to this exact place in myself which feels inexplicably right.
One decade ago, I stood in front of a mirror in a therapists office, sobbing as I looked at my reflection. The task was to face the thing I feared most. Which, at the time, was my own face.
For years, mirrors were crippling. A single glance could ruin a whole week. My vision was 20/20 (with contacts, of course, because you know by now that our ophthalmic genes are not our strongest), but I couldn't see myself.
I can still remember those therapy sessions and that specific time with such clarity. The angst. The deep, dark, debilitating depression.
Working through it took time. And work. Work done with a therapist who saved my life. It also took the support of a select handful of friends—people close to me who didn't need to fully understand what I was going through to understand how important it was to be there, to listen, to sit by my side and let me cry.
After I began to stitch my pieces back together, I felt an intense shame that the break ever occurred. Shame that I had sunk so low. Shame in my own capacity for fracture and despair.
I moved into my mid-twenties surprisingly intact. Collecting small successes and personal triumphs. Wearing the external air of "I've got my shit together, I always have." I refused to look back, to acknowledge. Even in my own head, I shoved the memories away—that darkness didn’t suit the person I was becoming.
But now, sitting here with all my drinks and my lizard and my morning eyes, I feel so far from shame. It's been replaced by a gentleness for my younger, struggling self, and an appreciation for what the heartbreak taught me, all the ways in which it made me more me.
Those years felt like knives. But they gave me a certainty in my own capacity to overcome, to transform, to grow. They taught me about hurting and healing and the dignity of scars. They sliced open an empathy and vulnerability within me that I wouldn’t trade for anything.
Nothing outwardly big happened this year. No big work change, no big relationship change, no major move. I haven't cut my hair more than three inches all year. I bought maybe four new shirts and they were all black. But the internal shifts were seismic. Not loud shifts that disrupted or cracked. But enormously soft, serene shifts.
Pieces of myself settling in, finding their home.
Thirty has brought an evolved confidence, one that that feels distinct from the kind I had before. This one doesn't seem to hinge on anything external, it isn’t shaken by mistake or upset. It has enough humility to wobble, but has grown too sturdy to crack or crumble. The change is subtle but grounding.
Thirty has also brought a tangible contentment in a life that is unquestionably my own. It's a contentment that feels extra good because I can see how it was earned.
Be aware of what you've been given, Had, but also acknowledge what you've made.
As I finish my tea, I feel a serious comfort in the uncertainty that lies ahead. And maybe that is the most unexpected gift of this past year: a great calm. A peacefulness. An unanxious inner steadiness. An appreciation for today that doesn't hinge on tomorrow. An assuredness in my own capacity to love and be loved. An internal restfulness rooted in personal honesty and truth, effort and care.
I'm excited for you to know this feeling.
Don’t worry about hurt.
Don’t worry about time.
Don’t worry about what everyone else is doing.
Definitely don't worry about your eggs.
You can always freeze them until the rest of you is ready to decide things like that.
Just keep going, my love.
It gets so good.
I love you I love you I love you,
Aunt Liz
