Why hello there! Fancy seeing you here again! I know, I know … But I thought that May 1st would be an apropos return to Scarlettopia, given that the first few months of the year were particularly challenging ones, and it finally feels like a good time to begin anew. Today also marks the final month of my 20s, that mysterious decade when a girl becomes a “woman-child” and is known to engage in a cocktail of salacious activities and adventures.
My 20s were actually divided into equal 5ths, and I remember turning 20 years old as clearly as if it were yesterday. I was in Ireland, a tiny village called Cashel, with my college acapella choir. We were at the midpoint of a deliriously amazing 10 day tour, and on June 1st I shyly mentioned that it was my birthday, which led to an impromptu celebration in a local pub. You haven’t lived until you’ve had cake topped with frosting infused with Irish cream, and an amber-colored, locally brewed ale on the side. I got so blissfully “blurry” that night, raucously dancing with the barkeep while my choir friends belted an African folk song at the top of their lungs. The trip was punctuated by a truly incredible few days in Dublin, at which point I came home and promptly informed my parents that I was breaking off my mediocre relationship, dropping out of college, and moving to Ireland.
Hey, I made good on 2 out of 3. ;-)
Despite my lofty transatlantic intentions, the first 2 years of my 20s were actually spent working a mindless clerical job at an engineering firm; a job that became burdened with daily anxieties and weekly pink slips after 9/11. Like all my fellow New Yorkers, I gazed skyward in fear every time I jet roared overhead, and I watched the industry I worked in crumble as swiftly as those iconic towers. Come my 22nd birthday, I was desperate for a change, and ended up moving to Chicago, wherein I kicked off the second 5th of my second decade.
Those two years were depressing as hell – living in a home, a city, a relationship that were at times unfamiliar, unfriendly, and unforgiving. At 24, I moved to Arizona, a place I instantly loved, and began working on putting the heretofore scattered pieces of my identity back in order. I started a new business, and within another 2 years I had gathered the strength to start a new life. By the age of 26, I had reached my turning point.
I indulged – oh, and how. I made new friends, tried new things, had some experiences that put a guaranteed grin on my face and merry giggle in my chest to this day. I was flush with the success of my business and the freedom of my spirit, and I enjoyed the hell out of myself. But reality is a cruel mistress, and I think the overwhelming majority of my American denizens remember the dark cloud of uncertainty that settled over the country in early 2008. It was like all of the carefree cheer had been vacuumed out of the atmosphere, and I rediscovered myself as a lonely 28 year old woman, worldly and wise, but weary and worried all the same.
The final chapter of my 20s has brought mixed blessings. I started a new relationship as I was falling out of love with my failing business. I began experiencing gnawing insecurities – the same ones that made my teenage years so brutally lonely – but at the same time, I was enjoying some wonderful new friendships and interwebs connections. I started sensing the tumultuous reality of mortality as parents and brother all suffered a variety of maladies and misfortunes – the latest being my dad’s cancer diagnosis, which cast a particularly dark cloud on these last several weeks.
And then, the realization that the roiling, toiling waves of this decade were subsiding, and the swiftly moving current of my 30s was beginning to drag me in with the undertow. But when it comes right down to the passing of the baton between this decade and the next, I’m not sure how to feel. When I turned 10 years old, I remembered a passage from A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, one of my all-time favorite novels: “Today, I am becoming a woman.” When I turned 20 in the (literally) intoxicating merriment of that Irish pub, I thought, “Today, I am becoming an adult.” But what does one become when they turn 30?
If you ask some women, the dawning of your 30th year is immediately fraught with emotional anxieties – but not for this girl. I don’t have the tick-tock of a biological clock in my ears; no gray hairs to hide and no “fine lines” to diminish; no mysterious creaks in the knees or cricks in the back. In fact, the older I get, the younger I look – a notion that my mom lovingly (though begrudgingly!) agreed to. I’ve always been a firm believer in the “you’re only as old as you feel” philosophy, though at the moment, I’m hard-pressed to define the digits in that equation. Still, I’ve always had a fondness for people with that luminous, ageless quality about them – something you usually only find in enlightened people past the mid-century mark. Ask me again when I turn 50, I suppose!
So … That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it. This year has been challenging thus far, but I’ve buried a seed of confidence that the 2nd half will be promising, and that bud is slowly starting to blossom. This decade has been at times weird and wearying, whimsical and wild – but I look forward to what the next one holds. In some ways I feel as though I might just be reborn – renewed (or perhaps “re-nude”) in a sense. But for now, I’ll enjoy these last few days of my troublemakin’ twenties. My next birthday might not be as heady and hedonistic as my 20th, but if women do indeed age gracefully like fine wine, I look forward to the intoxicating memories to come.
