a love letter to thirty

On my twentieth birthday, I lost my iPhone at a music festival. It was the only phone I have to this day ever lost (hopefully the last)) and I still struggle to accept it. I don’t know how it happened, one minute it was just gone and as someone who thought of themselves as quite vigilant, more than the idiots around me who would lose their phones, this was a tough pill to swallow. People like me can also lose their phone, 5 vodka red bulls deep. It was just over a month before I was about to move to London on my own and was I really capable of it if I couldn’t even look after the most necessary belonging I own? My friend reluctantly lends me her phone for a call. “Mum, can you come and pick me up? I lost my phone and my day is ruined. I need to come home and question everything about who I really am.” Welcome to the twenties.

I’m sure the experience of encountering something that makes you question everything you thought was certain will continue into the rest of our lives but to me, the twenties are the first of it. The first decade of having the capacity to start to not just properly see and experience life, but begin to understand it. I will always be grateful to my mind for aching to do this in countless different places, as unsettling as it is to never have a permanent place to rest your head, not like the one in your family home. I was always on my own, unattached to anything. As isolating and lonely as it was at times, I grew in ways I don’t think I ever would have if I stayed still. I needed to move my life with time, so that it was always surrounded by something exciting. This is a letter to the girl who was texting friends from her iPad 10 years ago because she was down a phone.

Holly, once you reach 30…

You will question where the time went from putting the garden sprinkler on sway underneath the trampoline and jumping over it with your brother and neighbourhood friends after school on a summer afternoon. When did you surrender your time to something other than what you wanted to be doing? You’ll think about the happiness you felt as a child, ignorance, bliss. You’ll wonder why you were so desperate to grow up, realising it wasn’t all it seemed. How at 8 years old the idea of Mcdonald’s for dinner every night seemed like the best idea ever yet you were stuck eating mum’s home cooked meals every night (boring!!!!). How you’d now often get a late night Mcdonald’s delivery, the childhood dream. How it will arrive and you will look at it and wish it was one of mum’s home cooked meals.

You will begin to realize that in a society that will continue to favour beauty over mind, you must never lose sight of what you look like on the inside. If you look after what’s on the inside, the outside follows suit. It’s not about how light you bleach your hair or how well you can do your makeup, how many calories you put in vs calories you put out or what brands of clothes do you wear, how many Instagram followers you have and how frequently you’re spoken about, it’s about how you love yourself and how you look after that love. That is the real beauty, that is the one people will see, the right people and most importantly, that is the beauty you’re going to feel. If you look after your mind and body, the world will look after you. If you love yourself, the world will love you back.

You’ll think back to when you were younger, you’d always take your friends side in any conflict they had because your friend was always in the right, no matter what the other party had to say. It was either that they had been hurt by someone or that someone had been hurt by them and if that was the case- your friend had EVERY RIGHT. As you get older, you’ll continue to take your friends side, have their back and speak highly on their behalf in a room full of doubters. But there will be times when your friends are in the wrong and you know it. You’ll have to love them anyway, because love isn’t a choice, it’s an emotion. You’ll have to have uncomfortable conversations and realize it takes a lot more than having the same taste in music and wanting to do the same things on the weekend to properly be someone’s friend. You’ll learn that to truly love someone else- means to carry a little part of their pain too. You’ll involuntarily do it. It will also feel good to love like that.

You’ll know (but still struggle to practise) that a clean room and a made bed makes quite literally, everything better. The world is unpredictable, some days are lovely and some days are absolutely shocking and alot of those things are going to be out of your control. Let the place you rest your head be calm, free of clutter and chaos. Coming home to a messy room can be the cherry on the cake to a night full of tears.

There will be days that come where it feels like all the love in the world has run out and if it hasn’t, your capacity to feel it has. This will hurt. You will feel it in the core of your chest, spreading to every inch, every fingertip. You’ll walk through the dark, reaching out for a wall with a light switch, to flick and bring some kind of clarity to your reality, some kind of light. You’ll come across these days more often than you want to. What’s the point? You’ll try your best to push some love out into the world, hoping it will be mirrored back to you, sometimes it won’t be. You’ll feel that too. On these days, you need to trust in the magic of the seasons.

You’ll continue to follow where your feet take you. 25, 26, 27. That will be liberating, to be doing all the things you want to be doing, breaking out of the norm. You’ll watch your friends at home get into serious relationships while you jet abroad to another country, with no desire to compare your different lives, other than knowing you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be. The time will pass and the relationships your friends get into will turn into shared homes and engagements and babies. 28, 29, 30. You’ll begin to see the permanence being created in the lives around you. You’ll look to see your own. You’ll not see much. You won’t have “your person” or a home of your own or a fertilised egg growing in your womb. You won’t even have a plan to make that happen. You’ll find permanence in the way you feel. The memories you carry. The experiences that you’ve chased. You’ll find permanence in yourself. You’ll wonder what that will look like in the future because you know how much has changed since it all started. A crowded hostel room doesn’t have the same interest as it did when I was 21. To live alone is too expensive. Groceries for one cost the same as groceries for two. Flights to new cities aren’t as affordable as they used to be. The people around you are changing the ways they want to live, more permanent. You’ll wonder where’s left for you now. Knowing you’re not the only one here, 30 years old with no desire for the picket fence and two beautiful, well behaved children. You’ll wonder if you made the right choices, if staying on the original path placed in-front of you would’ve lead you to feeling more fulfilled now. You’ll think about who you would’ve been, what you would’ve done.

You’ll reflect on all of the things the 20s haven’t been, then you’ll reflect on all the things they were. The 31 different countries you visited in that time. From the Great Pyramids in Egypt, the countless trips to different European cities, the stories you carry that happened in those places. All the shitty shots of tequila and men you kissed goodnight. The friendships you made. The current ones, the past ones, the embers of friendships you only get to ignite through an annual Facetime (if only we all had more time to nourish the loves in our life that make us feel alive). You’ll think about all the things you have seen and learnt by seeking the life you wanted. You’ll realize you never made a plan, but just followed your heart. You never dreamt of the belly bump and packed lunches. You never made a Pinterest board of your dream wedding (you saw your friends comparing there’s one day, you went home and tried to make one, this is what I should be interested in right now, you got bored). Instead, you made them of sunsets and tasty foods and cities you’ve not seen yet. You made them of mountains you dreamt to climb. You’ll realize you’re not disappointed in where you are and who you’ve become, it’s sometimes just a scary place, to be following a path that has no blueprint, just trust and eagerness for an extraordinary life.

You’ll realize that at the beginning of your 20s, you felt the same. Wondering if you’re capable, if you’re doing it right and here at the end of them, if given the opportunity, to go back and change anything, to go back a decade and tell yourself to start dreaming of different things (and to never let your phone out of your sight at a musical festival), that you wouldn’t change a thing.

If you read my blogs and enjoy them, please do reach out and send your love, it is always appreciated. - Holly