It's Weird Bitch Season

some thoughts on getting older & the fear of being seen

Writing this actually scares the shit out of me – which is why I’m doing it. I wrote a version of this post last week, then scrapped it, which is why this newsletter didn’t go out last Sunday (um, sorry about that?). It felt too vulnerable – and I chafed at not yet being “done,” whatever the fuck that means. In exactly six months, I’ll be thirty, a fact that continues to blow my mind, since last week I was twelve and begging for an LG Chocolate, and last month I was eighteen and moving into my freshman dorm, and this morning I was six, complaining to my mom about having a tummy ache.

Despite the contents of this post, I am so glad to NOT be 22 anymore lmaooooo.

The fearmongering around turning thirty is something I’ve mostly managed to avoid, along with the idea that college is “the best years of your life” – luckily, I’m pretty resistant to messaging where the subtext is “it’s all downhill from here.” Yet I haven’t been able to escape the introspection that accompanies a milestone birthday, especially one that has always been weaponized as an expiration date for women. Have I done enough? Am I impressive enough? And if not, is it too late to turn it around? Of course, these concerns naturally raise questions of their own. Done enough of what? Impressive enough to whom? And too late to go where, to do what? None of it makes any sense!!! But that is part of the curse blessing of consciousness: you’re free to conjure up whatever thoughts you want, even if they don’t make any gotdamn sense. Oh, the joy of being alive!