I am turning thirty this week. Really. Finally. And I haven’t dreaded it at all. I don’t fear wrinkles. I’m not scared of being older than I have been. I like to think I am the type of person to embrace it. I like myself ever so much more at thirty than I did at fifteen, nineteen or twenty-three. And I am beginning to realize why. I know myself better now than I did then. At one point I dreaded aging because I was afraid of being unsatisfied with myself. I feared that I would reach a milestone and only see what I hadn’t done, what I wished I would have done, and felt miserable at the waste of time. How I should’ve taken those art and guitar classes I have always wanted to. I could’ve gone to graduate school, learned to crochet, and gotten over the asthmatic anxiety that snorkeling gives me. I didn’t do any of those things.
Instead of marking achievements and the lack thereof, I am learning to look at who I have become rather than just what I have done.