I am aging well

I turned thirty a few weeks ago. I’ve been meaning to write about it, but didn’t get around to it. It came and went. I had two parties (one a surprise, one by design) and some wonderful laughs and then, just like that, the day I’d been dreading was gone. It’s silly, but when I was younger, I had this “premonition” that I would die before I turned thirty. I realize now that “premonition” actually meant “I can’t actually imagine what my life will be like that far from now, so my stupid teenage brain is just going to romanticize some End Times for myself”. What can I say? I was reading a lot of Plath and Dickinson and I listened to depressing music all the time. It was the 90’s.

It is no secret that aging scares me. I have been pretty honest about it. Anyone who follows me on Twitter or Facebook knew that turning 30 was a big deal for me. I’m terrified of dying; utterly, completely, totally fucking terrified. Even more than being scared of dying, I’m scared of getting old and I’m scared of my body betraying me. I’m scared of suffering and I’m scared of not being able to do things for myself. I’m also scared of being irrelevant. Turning thirty took all of these fears and stirred them up big time. Not because I think thirty is old (it’s not), but because it’s closer to being old than twenty is. It’s a landmark age. There are no more excuses, no more stalling; adulthood is here to stay. I think it’s different for women too. Mammograms start at 35. Fertility gets more complicated if you want to have kids. That glimmering hint of mortality you experience in your twenties hits you in the face like brass knuckles.

Then I actually turned thirty, and I weirdly stopped giving a shit about all of it.

I can honestly say that I like thirty year old me a hell of a lot better than I liked twenty year old me. Thirty year old me is much more confident and self-assured. Thirty year old me is able to be healthy and happy without throwing herself down the rabbit hole every five seconds. Thirty year old me doesn’t take shit from people. Thirty year old me tells those to fuck off who deserve to be told to fuck off. Thirty year old me is taking inventory and taking charge. I am a damn lucky woman. My twenties could have been a disaster if two or three things had gone differently. I am very happily married, gainfully employed, and have had some modest creative success. I am not complacent, not by any means, but I am no longer waiting for the other shoe to drop. I spent my first couple of decades constantly worried about everything. I don’t want to do that anymore.

For the first time in my life, I know who I am. It is an incredible feeling to recognize the woman looking back at me in the mirror. For my whole entire life, I have never known who I was. I only knew the person that people wanted me to be, the person people expected me to become. Part of the reason I am a writer is because I desperately wanted to know myself. Now that I know, my point of view feels much more tangible. I already see the results. My critical eye is much more keen. I am confident enough to cut an entire page of unnecessary dialogue. I don’t cling to lines I fell in love with or scenes that don’t work. I scrapped 40+ pages of a play and started over again, and in a weekend rewrote the whole thing. Twenty five year old Kari would never have done that, and thirty year old Kari has a hard drive full of awful shit that will never see the light of day because of it. I know when to say yes, when to say no, and how to do the right thing for myself. I suppose that’s called maturity. I suppose that’s called grace.

I look around at the theater world, and I see all these 22 year old wunderkinds getting all these huge prizes and accolades. This used to make me panicked, but now I am strangely optimistic about my future. It would not shock me in any way if my best work happened in my thirties, or even my forties. I am glad that I can leave the twenties behind with a renewed sense of purpose. There’s something comforting in thinking that my best work is still ahead of me.

Dar Williams has a great song called “I Am Aging Well”. I heard this song on my birthday and it hit me like a ton of bricks, especially this verse.

when i was fifteen, oh I knew it was over
the road to enchantment was not mine to take
’cause lower calf, upper arm should be half what they are
I was breaking the laws that the signmakers made

and all I could eat was the poisonous apple
and that’s not a story I was meant to survive
I was all out of choices, but the woman of voices
she turned round the corner with music around her
she gave me the language that keeps me alive

she said “I’m so glad you finally made it here,
with the things you know now, that only time could tell
Looking back, seeing far, landing right where we are
And oh, you’re aging, oh, and I am aging, oh, aren’t we aging well?