This week I turn 30. Semi Charmed Life and Criminal also turn 20. I’m not sure which one feels more depressing in this moment.

For better or for worse, I’m incredibly in touch with my 25-year-old self. Perhaps it’s because I journaled almost every day, or maybe it’s because of Facebook memories, or maybe it’s just the way life is.

I’ve recently spent a lot of time longing for and romanticizing my 20’s. Most of it was spent on the streets of NYC, in bars I can barely remember, with people I don’t talk to anymore. For some reason, those days seem so sweet. I can taste the sidewalk, feel the wind from standing on a rooftop and smell the scent of OM Yoga Studio where I found myself finding myself again and again.

Back then I looked at 30 with fear. I remember feeling like my life needed to be figured out by 30 and it needed to be perfect. As each year passed I felt an increased pressure around what 30 meant and that life was slipping through my fingertips. Now that 30 is here I am realizing that I don’t have it all figured out and I don’t necessarily want to, but there’s still an ingrained pressure of “JESSICA! WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING WITH YOUR LIFE? AND ALSO, CLEAN YOUR BEDROOM.”

So now I’m a few days from 30 and it doesn’t feel real. I still feel like a 27 year old looking at 30 from afar with an internal pressure to get it together. Right now, in this moment, 30 seems daunting and I don’t want it to happen. I don’t have everything figured out that I thought I would and I don’t have a hold on myself like I wanted. I find myself holding onto the final days of 29 hoping I can squeeze out one more day, do one more thing, or accomplish one more goal.

I think there is a lot my 20s can teach me about living and grow up. Back thenI spent a lot of time in yoga studios, psychics chairs, meditation halls, life coaches homes, in weekend intensives in hotel rooms. I was obsessed with “finding myself” and “letting go” and impatiently awaited the day it would all sink in.

But that is also because I felt really dead. I specifically remember a day when I was so hungover that I didn’t even realize a lens popped out of my sunglasses. That is until the cashier at Rite Aid laughed at me and asked me if it was a new style. I remember walking out and crying on the sidewalk for how lost I was in that moment and really, all moments.

I spent a lot of time back then crying. A lot of time in massage chairs trying to get out the emotional and physical knots of carrying the whole world on my shoulders day in and day out. I was always living for my day off to catch up when I never really actually caught up. I envied every single person around me and found reasons why I was less than. They had something special, I thought. And I didn’t. And honestly, I still think that quite often.

My goals for 30 were always clear: Married. Child/children. Apartment with plants (preferably one with bookshelves in the walls). Tons of money. A career path that did not involve an office. Wearing heels. 6 pack abs. A memoir written and sold on Amazon. I wanted to have “made it” in some way.

Some of those “goals” got accomplished. It actually now feels weird calling them goals – like a marriage and a child. They’re not goals, after all, they’re people! Nonetheless, a lot happened in my 29th year. For starters, I got married and had a child, but I also fully left my full time “safe” job. I had been hanging on to the coattails for some time and decided if my baby girl wasn’t a reason to take the risk and quit then what would be? Two babies? A panic attack?

I don’t have that dream apartment or even a sense of a definite career…but I do have a sense of right now that I didn’t have when I was 25.

…and I don’t even know what I mean by that.

But what I guess I mean is that if I could go out with my 27-year-old self I’d tell her that she doesn’t need to figure it all out and that life will unfold as it is meant to unfold. Things will happen that you would never have thought and opportunities will come that will stretch your comfort zone. There is no sense of “making it.” There really is just a sense of living and feeling proud. After all, a lot happened for me in a year and it really was exactly how it was meant to happen.

I’d also tell her to hold onto and nurture those friendships – especially the ones that fell through the seems over the years. People come and go in life but too many people have come and gone in mine and I miss them. So many of them. I find myself at 30 truly missing the sense of family in friends I once had…knowing I can’t really get that back.

I’d tell her to pick her head up and look out into the world. She was the most hard-working 20 something I’d ever seen but she hid behind her dark glasses, bangs and yoga pants. It wouldn’t hurt to take a class on how to do your own makeup – not for the outside world, but for yourself.

I’d tell her to put down the alcohol and spend more time being present.

I’d tell her to love her mentors but not be manipulated by them. To own her own voice.

And most importantly I would tell her that a man will not make you happy. And those who know me well know how loaded that subject is.

As I write this I think the 25-year-old me has a message for me now. She would tell me to take that journal back out and start writing again. She would tell me to spend more time on that yoga mat and less time in my head. She’d also tell me to pick up the books that healed and inspired me then because there’s probably a ton of healing to do now. I think she’d also tell me that the longing I feel now for connection in numerous forms (learning, being, growing, friendship) can be found if I ever did let myself LET GO and actually live.

I will say that the 25-year-old me would have never actually thought that I’d be married with a beautiful baby working for myself. That was a dream that has manifested itself beautifully.

I really don’t know what the moral of the story or the moral of this blog is. It started with a pit in my stomach over Criminal turning 20, and me turning 30, and now I feel a bit hopeful. Maybe my 30’s CAN be the year I learn to be present and trust myself. Or maybe I just learn how to do my own makeup. Either way, it’s here and I have a choice to either embrace it or fight it and I guess it’s time to just to open up and let life live.