Guest blog posts: A woman's view on turning thirty

A house with a garden, a car less than 5 years old, a professional job not in a pub, long term boyfriend, a five speed ‘blender’, a 32 inch HD TV with blue ray DVD and a subscription to Love Film, a king size bed with a goose down duvet, a proper piece of art rather than a poster, a cat, two holidays abroad a year (one city break, one sunshine break, usually to someone’s wedding). Sex once a week if you are lucky, more like once a month if you are realistic. Beauty salons and getting your hair dyed every six weeks to combat the growing grey. Settled into the shit together, path decided, one long walk into middle age with a spreading tummy and a growing habit for expensive white wine and a takeaway every Friday night. On the way to adding to the having a baby at 29 statistic.

That was me at 29.

At the time I thought I had done everything right. I thought I was happy.

But I wasn’t.

I realised I had created an idealistic view of the future, one driven by the thought of failure and the fear of never having a honeymoon somewhere exotic. Whilst they say the youth is wasted on the young, I had instead wasted my youth pretending to get old. So, in the throws of an indulgent mid-life crisis I ditched all of it; including the long term man and the two-storey house and garden. I kept the cat.

 
Back on the sofa in my bachelorette pad I found for the first time in my life I didn’t actually know what was going to happen next, where the next day, month, year, decade was going to take me. But I realised that I didn’t actually care. That indeed planning my life out for my 20s hadn’t taken me to where I thought I wanted to go but instead it had brought me right back to where I had started from.

The night I turned 30 I reclaimed my youth. I drank cocktails, wore a body-con dress and found myself on the dance floor of a dirty sweaty club enthusiastically kissing a gorgeous man, five years my junior who had bought me tequila.

But more than that I found I was finally happy.

Turning 30 for me was much more than just a milestone, much more than a date to be dreaded and crossed off. Turning 30 meant I could forget the mistakes of my 20s in a haze of salt, drink, lime, salt, drink, lime. And after the hangover cleared I found that the best thing about turning 30 was that ahead of me was a whole new decade within which to make a lot more mistakes, have a lot more fun, and drink a lot more tequilas.

This post was kindly written by Miss Smidge who is a Guest blogger here at 30 years and counting. We therefore say a big thank you to Miss Smidge for her time. If you would like to find out more about Miss smidge then you can find her at her own excellent blog here. If you would like to write a guest post for 30 years and counting then please get in touch with us by email here.