In the grand theater of life, we often find ourselves cast in supporting roles, tirelessly propping up the brilliance of others while our own light flickers in the background. It's a familiar narrative, one many of us can relate to all too well, including yours truly. But as I journeyed through my own story, I recently came to a dawning, yet inherently terrifying realization: it's time to rewrite the script and step boldly into the role of the Female Main Character that has always been within each of us.

Over the past year, I've traversed a winding road, navigating through multiple job changes and unexpected health challenges. I severely herniated a lumbar disc and suddenly found myself bedridden for six months and counting, a far cry from where I expected to be at 32. (Psst, Taekwondo, you owe me a spine! “That’s what I get for trying new things as an adult,” I’d thought.)

As a single woman in my late twenties, I often find myself torn between the allure of adventure and the comfort of stability. I am frequently dreaming up my next move halfway across the world while simultaneously envisioning a life near my family and friends with a cutie husband. The desires for both are in constant tug-of-war in my mind.

While I daydream about these two different versions of my life, I try to remain present in the life I have chosen. However, the ever-present ticking time bomb looming over me as I approach my thirties acts as a constant reminder that my life is not exactly how I envisioned it to be, and I only have so many more months left to figure out my life according to the world.

Is he lying about his height? Are we going to have anything in common? Am I showing too much cleavage or not enough cleavage? What if he believes Donald Trump is simply just misunderstood and not a fake tan, face-melted megalomaniac? WHAT IF HE HATES HARRY STYLES? All of these are normal anxieties that I used to calm down with a few glasses of wine... That’s a lie. I would drown them out with a whole bottle. But now? Now, I’m different. Now, I’m sober.

As children, our job is to explore the world around us. We are a smooth surface with different facets to our personalities, likes, and dislikes just underneath that we eventually start to chip away. It starts simple enough. What’s your favorite color? Why? Did you like Bratz more than Barbies? Why? Which Ninja Turtle do you like more? Why? These seemingly “trivial things” we gravitate towards are essentially stepping stones to how we develop certain parts of our personalities and, more importantly, how we begin to learn things about ourselves. We are encouraged to talk about these “trivial things” to express ourselves and our joy as we connect with our peers.

And yet, there is an interesting phenomenon that happens in life where your passion and joy for “trivial things” shifts. Soon, if you’re too passionate, it is seen as an “annoyance” at best and a “red flag” at worst. So, eventually, the older we get, the more we tamp the passion down. After all, they are just “trivial things.”

There are some things people don’t tell you about turning thirty. Or, more specifically, they tell you, but you don’t listen because, oh my god, thirty is so far away, I don’t have to think about that right now. 

But when you turn 30, which is always less far in the distance than you’d imagine, some things will happen. Your search for back pain remedies on Amazon will autofill, as will mobility stretch videos on YouTube. You’ll start genuinely turning down pints at after-work drinks, opting instead for a lime and soda because you ‘have to be up early tomorrow’. And you’ll go to a lot of weddings. Like, so many weddings. More weddings than you have outfits for, but because you’re a millennial in your 30s, you have an inherent, Lizzie McGuire-induced fear of outfit repeating but no funds to reckon with that personal demon (again, millennial in your 30s).

Whatever it is to overthink every life decision, examine and re-examine all potential consequences and outcomes, and then decide it’s maybe better not to attempt the thing at all—that’s me. Bravery, after all, is an exhausting prospect with unknown results.

I read a statistic once that men will often apply for a job if they meet 50% of the criteria but thatwomen will only apply if they meet 80% or more. And it’s always made me wonder: What opportunities are we shutting ourselves out of just because we don’t feel ready?

In August of 2020, my grandpa, an 88-year-old man who was born as steady and sure as he’d prove to be every day of his impressive and honest life, died suddenly of a brain bleed. There was no extended illness – no winding journey toward goodbye dotted with peaks of jutting hope and longer valleys of slow grief. Sometimes death announces its arrival from far away, bouncing the sound of trumpets off the landscape of your life miles and miles before you can spot it on the horizon. But sometimes, it collides into you with such force and suddenness it leaves you dazed, blinking, and unable to recognize yourself at all.

“I don’t want to live a mundane life,” my sister said quietly over the phone.

We have been doing daily phone check-ins since her breakup. You know the kind. The kind of breakup that leaves you feeling like the very marrow in your bones has been carved out and replaced with hollow listlessness. The kind of breakup that makes you realize writing a grocery list by yourself is the loneliest experience in your life thus far. The kind of breakup that results in you ditching your life, your job, and the home you loved to live with your parents – states away – just to regain some semblance of yourself before you was lost to time.

To love.

To vacancy.

(Perhaps you did not have the latter half of this break-up experience, but you catch my drift nonetheless.)