Thirty

 I turn 30 tomorrow and I find myself getting emotional not because I'm sad that I'm getting old. Actually quite the opposite. I don't feel sad at all for the first time. I'm feeling relief as I leave my 20s behind. My 20s was a rollercoaster. I never realized that my 10th anniversary of being in America would land on the same year as my 30th birthday. I've spent all my 20s in America. It has been its own montage of amazing and shitty. Although if I were being completely honest I can only mostly remember the shitty. The painful. The dark. The loneliness. The anxiety. I've gone through a lot, grown through a lot. I'm grateful for my 20s but I'm so ready to be 30. 

I still feel like a child in so many ways. I still have no idea what I'm doing. I make coffee for a living and wear my hair in pigtails a lot. But I really do feel like for the first time I'm stepping into who I really am and who I'm supposed to be. I let things hurt me, I let things make me sad, I let things make me happy, and I let them go. These things that have happened to me do not define me anymore. They are a part of what has made me but they are not me. I can't fully put into words what I mean by feeling truly myself because I know this will be a lifetime of stepping into. But I feel like as I get older I am finally becoming the girl, the woman, the person, that 15 year old me wanted to be. I'm her and I'm really learning to love her more and more as we get older together. 

I am selfish at times. Harsh at times. Needy at times. Overly dramatic at times. Instead of trying to avoid her and overcompensate for her I'm learning to face her and really ask her why she's acting that way and what she's hoping to accomplish by acting that way. I know her better than anyone can and I can put into words her feelings and needs and wants if I gave her the space. I am not afraid of her anymore. She loves hard and with all of her. 

I've never been ambitious about what I could do. I've just always known I wanted to be surrounded by people I love and love me back and now that I have these people behind me, beside me, around me, to support me, I really do feel I could do anything. Maybe even start planning for the future and doing hard things. I still feel like a child in so many ways, like how truly excited I am to turn 30 and all the new things I'm about to experience.