I am ending a decade of existing while trying to survive other cycles. I am turning 30 as a full time student, which I didn’t plan on, but I knew it was coming. I didn’t understand that enrolling in law school at 28 would require feeding the adulthood that I built in the proceeding decade to survive these three years. Many cherished relationships did not survive. There’s no time for my beloved hobbies, and the confidence I cultivated no longer exists. This is the lowest I have been consistently since middle school. I am embarrassed to write that. I am as mortified to admit it as I am to re-read it.
This is a low point, not because I am turning 30 but because I am struggling in law school. I am struggling with how much of my life got consumed by this pursuit, how much of me got lost in it– how much of myself I can’t even locate anymore. I am indecisive, yet convicted. These convictions aren’t logical. All I know is that I must abide by my gut’s command. I keep asking it if we got it right by choosing this. It says yes, and this my only solace. It is the smallest relief from all my grief.
I am so spoiled that I get to grieve a life at all. I am privileged that I get to bemoan attending a professional program. It took a long time to even let myself feel that, to let my pain be as valid as the luck I know I have. Why does it feel most impossible to accept softness when we’re in a hard place?
Because I’ve gotta tell you, I have never had to accept so much grace from other people. It is overwhelming and humbling to be offered anything at all when I feel like nothing. I’ve spent my twenties in awe of the kindness and brutality people — often the same people– are capable of. This includes me. I’ve been disgusted and pleased by myself. I’ve left myself only to return.
There’s relief in aging. Youth is currency to an agist society, but currency rarely affords us reliable protection. Since fourteen, I’ve been on-guard. Since fourteen, I’ve seen this flash in the eyes of people (especially men) with experience or power over me. Youth is a shiny penny, not a shield. It is the thing that some people want to pick up and play with it because it makes them feel lucky, but they lose nothing in losing the penny. We, the pennies, the young people without last names or significant support systems, cannot afford to be dropped. I navigated my younger years in avoidance, with strategy. I did not get the same carefree youth some people discuss. Now, my energy is older. I am older. People who get off on manipulating young women don’t gravitate toward me like they used to, and that is a gift.
Aging is a force of nature. The alternative is death. Historic tragedies often involve man’s vain attempts to beat nature, and in one way or another, nature prevails. I do not want to fight natural processes by lamentation, illusion, or willpower. What willpower remains since I started law school can’t be squandered on lamenting a decade I already lived.
I don’t think that years belong to us. I can’t claim the time, but I want to work with it. Decision making became harder after law school. I feel like I might have screwed up my life by going, and now, every choice or option is doused in that same worry. The worry that I am bad and unworthy and stupid.
I turn 30 in an hour, and I am lonely. I turn 30 in an hour, and I’m not happy with where my life is. I don’t really like who I am in this moment or what I look like. But I don’t want to be anyone else. I don’t want to abandon myself just because that’s the pattern other people set for me. I want to greet this new decade with bare fingers and a bravery I haven’t known in a while. I want the real deal, and I want of be the real deal. And I’ll make it happen.
Marisa McGrath 