I think I'm in my veritable 30s-something crisis
I turn 31 in a few weeks, and despite all signs pointing to otherwise, I feel like I’m in the middle of a veritable 30-something crisis. Too inconsequential to be called a midlife crisis, too early to be pegged as a quarter-life crisis, I’m somewhere in the middle— straddling the emotional commerce of being a girlfriend of a three and a half year long relationship, of a senior employee at a firm with managerial responsibilities and expectations of leadership and initiative, scattered between Facetime calls, Whatsapp messages and Instagram DMs through which most of my childhood and early adulthood friendships persist. I invest in better skincare, and therapy, stay hydrated, do Pilates, say my ‘I love yous’ and ‘I miss yous,’ but I can’t seem to shake the feeling that something is inherently off. I can’t entirely concede to the path so meticulously laid out for all of us— degree, marriage, kids, annual vacations, steady climb up some mythical corporate ladder, education loans, home ownership.
Here are some tangible realities I see myself and those around me contend with; nobody has prepared us to watch our parents grow older, inevitably marching towards death. They tend to forget more, their resentments and unmet needs have calcified and settled into the folds in their skin and wrinkles on their faces, they have made/are making peace with their mortality. My parents have briefly discussed their retirement plans, wills, power of attorney transfers for properties, where the gold is stored. A deep sense of information, heirlooms, family secrets, seems to be transferring to me; their only child.
While I hold this information in my body and psyche, I contend with the duality of holding jobs to make money, while hoping a writing career that’s culminated into a novel often rejected on the grounds of being too political, takes off. Me, and most people surrounding me, are inherently lucky by way of being able-bodied, educated, without the pressures of basic survival, and we’re alive, we survived Covid, we should be happy, right? Sometimes, I feel, freedom is an addiction that’s hard to kick, and between the Feminist texts and fiction about women who refuse to cave to societal moors and the constant negotiation with the several emotional, psychological and physical spaces I inhabit daily, the lore of freedom has never had me in a stronger iron grip than it does now. Half my friends invest in homes with their partners, are on their way to having children or are currently bringing up four-month-olds, the other half go to dive bars every alternate day, sleeping around with impunity, but an overall sense of meaning making persists through all of us.
Having effectively lost the last two years of my twenties to Covid and the subsequent lockdown, returning to an economically precarious reality meant rushing back on the money train in this capitalist hellscape, and it’s only now we’re taking stock of what does it really mean to be in our 30s.
There’s a sense that time is contracting, running out, a pervasive sense that our looks or our bodies won’t last forever, that maybe we should seriously consider having kids , the feeling soon waysided by the exhaustion of new parenthood, searching for meaning in careers or seeking balance after working nonstop in our 20s— and speculating all the while thanks to social media if others are enjoying happier relationships, better jobs, and fitter bodies. There’s a clear fork in the road of sorts; what does it look like to cave into the path of least resistance (better job, money, partner, home, kids), or the very real tendency to want to burn it all to the ground?
A friend says considering leaving a relationship in your early 30s is not the same as anytime in your 20s because your options might be limited, or your willingness to negotiate old ways of being with new people in your life might be compromised. So, then the question begging to be asked is; are we all choosing to stay in relationships out of a fear of the unknown, of trying our best to not end up alone? Or, is there a sense of maturity in knowing that this moment right here is as good as it could possibly be? There’s simply no way to truly know how to grapple with the weight of uncertainty— of love, of my own relationship with myself, the people I love, the things and placed I used to cherish once, my changing desires and self-image, at once volatile and cathartic.
When I was seventeen, a boy I was dating (let’s call him F) used to say a rather pithy thing— everything fades. He’s forty, married with a five-year-old child now, and I find myself returning to this seemingly innocuous statement and find it to be increasingly true. Everything does fade— the thrill of the new job or promotion, a swelling bank account, holding hands for the first time with the person you’ve just fallen in love with, attractive people whose glow you can bask in, social media followers. Recently, I went to the beach and felt like I was over both beaches and sunsets.
A lot of writing tends towards a certain romanticisation of the bad, the difficult, the unspeakable, and the unknown. Perhaps, that’s why I’ve always been attracted to writing to begin with. It’s the only space in life where it feels okay to not have any answers, where going off-track doesn’t feel terrifying, where taking breaks from the mundanity of keeping a job, a relationship, and other social constructs, alive, doesn’t feel like its laden with effort and guilt. Ultimately, it feels like a certain step towards making some kind of meaning in our lives mediated by late-stage capitalism and its attendant baggage.
A part of me wants to blame the weather for this malaise. I finished the final edits on my novel in September and from then on to sometime March, I had a flurry of visitors. Two of my best friends, some friends of my partner’s, visits to my father outside the country, a wonderful, protracted twelve days in the hills with two of my closest friends. The ocean was perfect, the sunsets never tiring, the breeze cool, nothing happened, nothing happened, and then one day, summer hit like the rug’s been pulled underneath your feet. The world used to feel like a big house with its doors open, and now it feels like a punch in the face everytime I step out.
October-March in Goa feels like a practical joke, the other shoe dropping, the surprise party waiting for you in the dark of your own house. Even the good things arrive like a jump scare. Sometimes, I sit by plants and let their leaves caress my face, as if it would ever be possible to get close enough to anything.
I’m in love, and then my partner leaves for New York and its dirty subways, dirtier parties, small hotel rooms in Soho, and the cold air laced with pot and indifference. I fall out of love, we say maybe we want to see other people, touch that feels foreign, chase elusive thrills as we hurtle towards death to remind ourselves that despite the weight on my hips and the slant of his shoulders, we are young. These twenty days apart felt like years had passed, histories convulsed. Economies failed and bars closed, all kinds of people loved each other and then stopped loving each other. Groups of friends splintered and reformed, we went to parties, nursed hangovers. We watched new shows and collectively mourned Logan Roy’s death. We all tried to get better at one thing or another, and mostly failed, and occasionally succeeded. We talked about our social media following, and the Dior show, and the box office numbers, the murders of gangsters, we followed court cases on same-sex marriage legislations, Covid numbers swelled again. Everyone wore one kind of shoes, and then everybody was wearing a different kind of shoes. Everyone tried to forgive one another. People I saw everyday disappeared into the churn of associations and commitments. People got famous, got married, got pregnant, got divorced, got over one another or never did.
Despite the warnings and despite the odds, despite the banks and the news and the government and the heartbreaks and the cars and the phones and the headlines, the cold ground turns warm and the flowers push their way up into the sunlight. All along the filthy sidewalks, the trees bloom white and pink and then neon. Petals lined the asphalt and the air smelled like laundry and gasoline. Nothing stops it; every argument fails. Nobody asks to be reborn, and no one can do anything about it.
All around the world, summer arrives with stunning inaccuracy. It’s spring equinox, and suddenly, without warning, everything changes. All the leaves of the tree outside my window wither and fall, until they start to grow back, one stem at a time. Summer here makes me feel hideous and unprepared— like that nightmare about showing up to take a test you didn’t study for, which was how I knew it must really be summer. If only I had planned ahead for this, I told myself, just like I tell myself every year. If only this time I had remembered to become a wholly different person before summer arrived.
But there’s no way to be prepared for it. The coastal winter bursts at the seams with possibility; the beauty’s exaggerated, nobody stays in their apartment. Good weather elbows and shoves its way inside. On the first day of coastal winter, I would forgive anything; the obnoxious music at election rallies, burning piles of garbage, traffic jams, stale fish. Nobody who ever went outside on a coastal winter afternoon could really believe there are no second acts in everyone’s lives.
But, summer? Summer is proof that things change. Can people change? How can I change my life, my habits, my patterns? Does change necessitate suffering? In summer, this change is literal and obvious, as real as the sweat between my shirt and my skin as I sit indoors and write this.
I talk about the weather because sometimes it feels productive to focus my energy on the inevitables. I think F was wrong. Nothing fades, everything changes. I know why people assume the people we love won’t change. It’s smart to even believe that we won’t change. It’s necessary to live within the scope of circumstance, to make plans based on honest assessments of capacity and faults, shared histories and future possibilities. I know how to be safe, because I have been looking at safety my entire life from the outside, as though peeking into a stranger’s house. Some hope is useful, a lot of hope can be dangerous.
Summer comes every year, whether I feel beautiful or not, and just like all miracles, it feels both miraculous and ordinary. The coastal winter tells me that everybody can get what they want, should they choose it. This unlikely world, together, reaches for the sun.
I go out, and my hair’s a mess, my makeup runs, I don’t feel beautiful but nobody cares. There’ll be another winter, and yet another summer. And, I’ll never be prepared, buy new versions of the same clothes, post old photos with new captions. Seasons will change whether I’m happy or not and even when I fail to adequately love the people I love, even when I miss my deadlines, even when I leave texts unanswered, even when I’m too old, or not a good enough friend or daughter. It comes whether I get up early or sleep in late, whether I manage my time well or poorly. It comes even if I don’t go outside. There’s nothing to do about it, and no way to earn it.
In the warm air, every risk is worth taking, and nobody can come up with a good reason to go home. And there’ll be many more such crisis; they’ll be neither miraculous, nor devastating. They’ll hum along, before things change again.
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