never grow up

I’m turning 30 in a few weeks. Time is such a crazy concept. It feels just like yesterday when I was still bright-eyed and fresh out of uni with great expectations, deeply in love with a guy I was planning to marry within the next decade, and overall, quite excited for the future.

At 29, while my career is on track, I am also constantly exhausted. While I'm at peace with the idea of being the single fun tita to all my adorable inaanaks for the rest of my life, there are times when there's a longing to belong in someone's arms. I have outgrown a lot of my toxic ways (not all of them, unfortunately), but it came at the price of losing relationships I wanted to keep.

Don’t get me wrong. My life is highly privileged and I am extremely grateful for it.

But because I’m nearing 30, I feel like I should have more to show for the past decade. My own home is yet to be built and paying a mortgage by myself is harder than I thought it would be. I still haven’t gotten 11-line abs. There are days when I wish I was more open to dating, but I have yet to regain the confidence to love again. And thanks to the pandemic, I feel like I lost two years' worth of life experiences.

So here we are.

There’s this overwhelming feeling of not knowing if I’m not doing enough or if I’m doing too much. I have always believed that I am far from ambitious. But thinking about it now, I can’t gauge if I’m purposely aiming low to soften the blow when I can only work my way up to a subpar level. I’ve been trying to do so many things all at the same time “while I can”. Yet I say I want to live life to the fullest by immersing myself in every moment in order not to miss it. I say I’m content, but I also want everything that life has to offer.

While I know deep down in my heart that I’ve progressed, it’s also extremely hard to look beyond where I feel stuck right now. I guess it’s the pandemic brain talking. Or maybe it’s aging blues. But the only thing I’m certain of right now is that we only have a few decades to live. And I feel like I’m running out of them.

‘never grow up’ is for the sad girls trying to hold on to the innocence of youth that is no longer there.

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