30

I’ve spent the better part of the past year – maybe even longer – fretting about my impending 30th birthday.

it seems like such a monumental number.  like New Year’s Eve, or
Daylight Savings.  when the clock flips over on midnight, I will be
thirty. everything different.  a whole new decade.  I will be changed.

and I worried for months and months what that new 30-Meghan would be.
 would she be poor?  successful? popular? lonely? lost?
confident?

would more of the little gray hairs that amuse my hairdresser crop up
along the crown of my head, like Gandalf the troll doll, sticking
straight up in stubborn salute declaring “30! 30!”

would the skin around my eyes continue to grow frail and delicate and
deliberate, taking longer and longer to return to it’s proper place when
I pull it out to apply and remover eyeliner?  will I have to figure out
the confusing world of eye cream?

would my joints start to ache, my hearing start to dull, my eyesight
grow to dim?  will my skin finally clear of the hormonal acne that has
plagued my face since the seventh grade?  will I finally, after years of
waiting, get my boobs?

will I be able to look at myself in the mirror and feel complete?  will I
make my parents proud?  will I stop being shy?  will I acquire a
zen-like patience, looking back on thirty years of life, and come to the
conclusion that it takes time to carve a river through rock, and stop demanding to know wht happens in the end?
 or the opposite – will I look forward to see my remaining years
slipping quickly away and be seized with a fervor to grab left but the
balls and charge bodly forward heedless of consequence?

by the time you read these words, it will have happened.  the magic
switch is already flipped.  and I have decided there is only one thing I
know in my heart, one truth I cannot deny, one certainty I can boldly
declare as 29-Meghan typing words to 30-Meghan to read in a future she
can’t yet see but can’t wait to live: