On being 29 [and not giving a sh*t]

I’m a vampire: I look pretty much the same since, like, a decade ago — more. But there are new things, like curves, that recently — last-18-months-recently — developed because I stopped starving myself and got the help I needed to recover from a lot of my shit at 27.

Plus, you know, not living in the closet and trying to will away my gayness helps. Turns out giving people the freedom to be themselves and not have to hide who they are allows them to excel mentally, emotionally, physically, financially — all the ways.

So I’m 29, one year from 30. Thirty is the age everyone always said was on the road to depressing times if you didn’t have a husband, child, settled-for marriage, a domesticated animal companion.

But I don’t understand what is so awful about aging. So you lived a long life, you get wrinkles and grey hair, your body ages as per what it’s been through. You’ve either got a lot of great stories about how you broke a lot of laws/rules, or you’ve got a bunch of boring ones about how you followed the rules — with the most wisdom coming not from your own experiences, but because you read it in a book.

Books are great, but a life is a lot like a book, with each milestone a part or chapter — or maybe it’s just a whole fucking book series, our lives.

And it makes me think that the reason people view 30 as devastating is the result of living a life full of regret, or of having unrealistic ideals about life overall — typically it’s women who complain, as if their prime is over by the time they’re 30.

Age is just a number to me. I realize, as an adult and a lesbian and a lesbian adult trying to date, age doesn’t matter so long as the other party is a consenting adult. That’s all that fucking matters.

Conversations people my age, or older, often have relate to how young we feel or how young our bodies feel or how much our bodies are aging.

I don’t fit into any of those conversations. I haven’t had kids, and I don’t currently plan to. My body feels capable of anything, with a bit of practice/training/stretching, so long as I feed it enough energy.

Recent realizations

1. I know what I want out of my life and have a general idea of how to get there. Now, if COVID-19 could just die already instead of upending our entire way of life…
2. Your 20s may be great, but they also suck. No one taught you how to fucking adult, but you have to figure it out anyway. And all your issues courtesy of how your parents screwed you up? If you don’t resolve them now, you’ll be stuck with them for eternity. Probably, most likely. Paraphrasing Taylor Tomlinson here.
3. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a good bribe if it gets you what you want, especially from the XY species.
4. The people who always complain about how we can’t “all just get along”, talk about their boyfriend and themselves like they’re a “we” couple, and feed off drama (even if it means they have to plant it themselves) are the people who peaked in high school and would have attended forever, if they’d had the choice.
5. I’m capable of a lot more than I give myself credit for, but it’s good to know my limits, too.

#LetsDiscuss is hosted by FYFA and ITAM.