I prepared as best I could for this milestone, but it wasn't enough to prevent a month-long identity crisis. That unwanted 3 at the beginning of my age changed everything—how I felt about myself, how I saw myself, how I related to those lucky young people in my singles ward still in their 20s, how I felt about my future—and it started changing the second my alarm clock switched to midnight on my birthday, like that ominous scene in Groundhog Day.
The getting older part had nothing to do with it. I'm saving the freaking-out-about-how-old-I-am for my 40th birthday. No, it was the stark reality that the life I was living was not the one I thought I would have at this point. Worse, I no longer had a youth buffer to hide behind; being 30 meant I had to face the facts like a grown-up.
These moments hit everyone in different ways, many times throughout their lives. This certainly wasn't the first time I had confronted uncomfortable life truths. But it hit harder this time because I felt like I had won a competition no one wants to win: Mormon and single at 30. Likely single for a long time to come.
I don't like to talk about my dating woes here—or to anyone who isn't in the same boat, really—but I'd be lying if I didn't acknowledge that the main reason turning 30 felt an awful lot like entering the depths of despair was because of that dang ticking clock. I'd already wasted a decade of potential childbearing years. Passed through a lot of milestones on my own I had wanted to commemorate with someone else. I can't get those years back.
And that's just the beginning. I also had to take a good look at the person I've become, which has set the foundation for who I'll be for the rest of my life. When the blinders came off, I didn't like everything I saw. The weaknesses I strived to overcome in my 20s are still my weaknesses, and likely always will be. I was forced to confront flaws that I've denied for years. (I used these rationalizations a lot: Oh, I may be stubborn about commas, but I'm not a perfectionist. I'm actually not too afraid to try this new thing, I'm just too lazy to do it.)
Such stark truths made me see the future differently, too. I had to accept that good-enough-for-now may end up being my happily-ever-after. Expecting every dream to eventually come true suddenly felt like a child's dream, now that I'm intimately familiar with how often real life disappoints rather than delivers.
I know I have a lot to celebrate, and I spent most of my 20s celebrating my good fortunes—a good career! money! independence! an awesome family!—but when you're in a crisis you don't always want to celebrate the good things. You just want the bad things to change. And planning for a life that includes the bad things is depressing.
It took night after night of intense prayer and journaling, but I eventually snapped out of it, emerging a tad more wise and empathetic, better equipped to try at life.
For instance, I now understand why people do crazy things like buy motorcycles when they're going through a mid-life crisis (in my case, that motorcycle will be a house, if all goes as planned). I think I have a better plan for living a life of purpose, one that caters more to my strengths rather than the unproductive cycle of tackling my weaknesses (it's not like my problems will disappear once I'm a daring, social individual, anyway).
Not to mention I've been reminded again and again that I still have a lot to learn about life, which is far more comforting than I could have predicted. (Although it'd be nice if the random emergencies October threw at me would subside, thanks.)
And that, my friends, is what's so great about being 30 as opposed to 20: knowing that there are still more unknowns than knowns is comforting, rather than terrifying. Who would have thunk it—life indeed does go on after age 29.
