Now that I am officially twenty-nine, there is no escaping that the big thirty is next year - the one I've read countless number of articles on, all with some variation of 30 things to do before turning 30.
To be honest, turning thirty scares me. Yes I know: age is just a number, you are as young as you feel, I still have my whole life ahead of me, I've accomplished a lot in my life. Yet somehow none of those statements have ever brought me the slightest comfort about approaching thirty.
I know I am competing against the life twelve year old me envisioned. The sprawling mansion with a drive-in gateway located on one acre of land with a stream running on the property. I'd be a well established surgeon in my field with an equally successful husband and two sweethearts, a boy and a girl, to call our children. At twelve, I envisioned the perfect life, perfect marriage, perfect family, perfect career. And isn't that all what we really desire at the end of the day? The fulfilment of our ideal childhood fantasies?
As I've grappled with living in a pandemic, job uncertainty, change in my relationship status - I literally forgot my birthday. The one birthday that I planned to just drink a bottle of wine and gorge myself with cheesecake because what else is there to do when the entire country is under lockdown and you can't go anywhere?
While I am writing this, it is half ten on a Sunday night with my birthday being in five days time. For whatever reason, I cannot muster up the excitement for this year or next year yet because God and God alone knows what the next twelve months hold in store for me.
Added to that, I've been robbed at gunpoint twice a few days after my birthday and my dad died six weeks after I turned 20. We'll call it triple trauma added to the pressures of life because guess what? Twelve year old me had certain ideas of what I wanted my life to be and seventeen years later I've come to realize what I really want out of life.
I want a happy marriage and a family to call my own. I want to hear the sound of my children's feet pattering on the floor. I want breakfast on a Sunday morning with everyone seated at the table. I want to hear 'Honey, I'm home' every single evening during the work week. The reality is and will be the opposite of that.
With an approaching deadline to have children, the thought of having to run tests, take drugs, the mere cost of it all...it just makes me push it away further and further. Although I do tell myself in two years time to have kids, start doing your check-ups now to see if you can have children, and don't forget to eat healthy and exercise at least three times a week because you have to give yourself the best shot possible. So I just close that aspect of my life and carefully shelve it away in the back of my brain because I'll cross that bridge when that time reaches.
Can we talk about job stability, financial stability and owning a house? There are many days where I don't know whether to laugh, or cry, or sell a viable organ. I've spent nine years working contract jobs which makes home ownership even more difficult than it already is. Job stability is a dream and a hope away for me.
Once again, I tell myself one thing at a time - my sacrifice must pay off, so I'll do what I need to do, save as much as I can, job hunt as much as I can, and keep searching for something or anything that'll help me attain this goal. Because when 30 hits the clock starts ticking and the length of the mortgage payment period decreases, guess what...
Once again I shelve it away in my brain but this time to the front because it's too important not to consider.
So here I am with 30 on the horizon...not quite fully panicking yet because in the midst of the chaos and uncertainty there is still some beauty. I still get to say I have a wonderful and supportive partner, I still have my job for now, my health is well enough for the time being, and I've accomplished a lot on a personal and professional level so far.
But for all my other 29 year olds or anyone actually who feels like they're racing against the clock, just know that you are not alone; it's okay to feel like this and wallow in self-pity; and hopefully one day it will all be okay.
THE END
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