It’s my birthday tomorrow, and I have a real problem with ageing.
I know I’m not meant to say that. I know that we’re meant to accept ageing with grace. To look forward to our deserved depth of knowledge and appreciate the generosity of life as it comes. To know ourselves better. To like ourselves more.
All of these things are true, and yet ageing still sucks.
There is something about being mid-thirties, for me. I didn’t mind turning 30 at all; it was strange, but not unwelcome. But 34 is decidedly mid-thirties, and after that comes late-thirties, and then 40s, and then 50s - which isn’t to say that any of those ages are bad, but simply that I am struggling to adjust to my own personal trajectory.
Perhaps it’s the fact that my early thirties have been somewhat stolen by the Covid years. I had so many hopes for this decade. Desires for a business that both I love and feel supported by; desires for a luscious community around me and deep friendship; desires for a home that reflects me, and a body that I feel home in.
And yet instead of those desires coming to fruition, I became completely disconnected from my business, felt and continue to feel more isolated than ever, and am currently living with my partner’s parents, so have no home of my own to speak of. I take solace in the last point improving, thanks to my somatic coaching training, but all of the others feel like I’m heading backwards.
But I’m not sure it’s just me.
This is a weird age. A strange and uncomfortable age of adjustment.
We are shedding the skins of our past selves. Perhaps outgrowing the versions for whom staying up late and drinking more than a couple of glasses of wine felt fun. Perhaps understanding that individualist thinking was a luxury - or a curse - of youth. Perhaps rejecting standards that were once perfectly acceptable.
For my friends, that adjustment is in becoming mothers, or growing their families. From the outside - and I’m aware this likely feels very different from their side - it seems as though they have somewhere to direct that sense of evolution, as though they are more tethered to it, with more of a sense about why and how their lives have to change.
I’m happy with the choice I’ve made in not following that path, but there is a sense of loss attached to it. Not the loss of a child, or a family, but a loss of direction for that evolution. Because it’s still there; the shedding is still happening, the change is still unfolding, but I’m less sure of how to respond to it. It feels like treading water - specifically the moment when you think you’re above the shallows, but when you go to put your feet down there’s nothing there and your head unexpectedly dips under water. I feel like I’m waiting for the point at which I can stand on solid ground.
And so I’m turning 34, and a large part of me doesn’t know what to do with myself. I don’t know the shops with clothes that don’t feel too young or too business-y. I don’t know the places I can work from that don’t feel too stuffy or too family orientated. I don’t know quite where I belong, and I am daunted by the continuation of this feeling, by the never-again-ness of the way things were.
I know there will, at some point, be a reprieve. I know this is the mess of the middle, the pull backwards of the arrow, or other reassuring sentiments.
But, right now, it’s my birthday tomorrow, and I’m not sure I want it to be.
Really enjoyed this, and I relate so much to what I'd hoped for at this time versus the reality. My age keeps clocking up a number, and I can't catch up with it...