Saying goodbye to my twenties
In a couple of days time, I’ll be leaving my twenties behind and turning the big 3-0. It feels like this birthday has been hovering on the horizon for quite a while now, and I’ll admit that I’ve worried about how it might feel to leave one decade behind and embark on a brand new one.
I think that apprehension is only natural. While it’s easy to rationalise that nothing changes on the strike of a clock, pretty much every piece of media I’ve consumed about women leaving their twenties behind features a major freak out of some sort, from ~that~ episode of Friends where Rachel turns 30, to the chapter in Dolly Alderton’s Everything I Know About Love, where she writes in depth about the anxiety she experienced in the lead up to her own milestone birthday.
It’s perhaps not surprising then, that I worried a little about how I might react to turning 30. But the truth is, I’m feeling good about this new chapter. Weirdly, it feels like exactly the right time to be closing the door on my twenties, a decade that has been jam packed with all manner of weird and wonderful experiences. I feel like I’ve lived through a lot in these last ten years, and I’ve certainly grown and changed a lot too.
It’s safe to say that my twenties have been punctuated by some pretty major moments - falling in love, getting married, becoming a homeowner, building a career that I’m really proud of. There have been hard times, too - dealing with grief and loss, struggling with bouts of poor mental health, navigating tricky situations at work and in my personal life. And I’ve also had my fair share of fun - watching the sunrise at Glastonbury, partying in Ibiza, and visiting New York as many times as my bank balance would allow.
But I think that when I look back on my twenties in years to come, it will be the quieter shifts that I’ll remember most fondly. The moments that couldn’t be neatly summarised in an Instagram caption, the evolutions that happened so gradually that I am only noticing them now as I cast my mind back to how I felt in my early twenties.
Everybody tells you that life gets better with age, that your confidence grows with every passing year, that you become more comfortable with who you are with every birthday that comes and goes. And as cliche as it may sound, it’s true, or at least it has been for me. The last 2 years have felt particularly game-changing - I’m more confident in my ambitions, more comfortable with taking the road less travelled, and a hell of a lot less desperate for everybody to like me. Life is definitely slower paced than it was back when I was 24, but my god, it is more peaceful in every sense of the word.
And so, as I say goodbye to my twenties this week, it isn’t fear or sadness that I’m filled with, but gratitude and joy. I feel so thankful for every memory I’ve made in the past ten years, for the happy moments and the challenging ones too. I’m so grateful for the people I’ve spent that time with, for the places I’ve travelled to, for the incredible experiences I’ve had. I’m thankful for all of the lessons I’ve learned, for the ways in which I’ve grown, for the resilience I’ve acquired throughout this often chaotic and testing decade. It’s been an absolute blast, but I’m ready for the next chapter.
My thirties have certainly got a lot to live up to, but boy am I excited to see what they’ve got in store for me. I’ve got a feeling that this next decade will be even better than the last…
