Farewell to my Twenties...

Thirty. The number sits in my mouth like a slow-melting caramel; it’s sweet, a little sticky, lingering longer than I expected. I woke up this morning to the quiet hum of my apartment, the sunlight spilling across the sheets, my body curled into itself like it’s protecting some small, glowing secret.

The truth? I don’t feel settled the way I thought I would. Honestly, I mostly feel restless, almost electric, like there’s a wire in me that’s been humming for years, waiting for an internal switch to be turned on.

My twenties were a classroom. I learned how to please, how to fold myself into other people’s shapes, how to play at being what others wanted. I learned how to radiate confidence in a cocktail dress, when to laugh at the right joke, how to let things slide as if nothing could bother me. I learned to make love like a performance, watching myself from above my own body.

My thirties? I want them to be something else entirely. A brave new world.

In this world, I want to wake up in a body that feels like mine and not a display for approval that earns others’ affections. I want my body to be a living, breathing cathedral for desire. I want my hands to explore without shame, my voice to rise without apology. I want to shed every script I’ve been reciting since adolescence and improvise something viscerally feral, something actually true.

I want a revolution that won’t be polite. I want to harness all the messy, honest rebellion borne from deep under my ribs. I want desire without censorship. To touch without premeditation. To love without a safety net in the event that I fall.

Liberation, though, doesn’t have to be loud or messy. It’s freeing to step away from who you were and to step toward who you can be, but essentially what I want is to lose myself. Unwind and unfasten the tidy layers of personhood I’ve imposed onto myself for nearly a decade. A slow unbuttoning of the years of tight, careful rules.

This isn’t about finding someone to light me up. It’s about letting parts of myself burn.

Thirty is nowhere near the end of my youth; it’s the end of pretending I don’t know what I want. And God, do I want more…

Tonight, I think I’ll pour a glass of wine, stand in front of the mirror, and meet my own gaze for longer than comfort allows. I’ll tell myself: You’re allowed. You’re ready.

As for the next decade, may it be utterly and deliciously mine.