Turning 30 is not what you thought
On the A2 from Utrecht to Amsterdam, I suddenly had a flashback. Not to one of the certainly hundred times I drove there towards the editorial office, but to earlier, earlier. To the time when I gave my teachers a heart rate increase with my somewhat recalcitrant attitude and I got the wild idea to ask for a tattoo for my sixteenth birthday. On my lower back, which is now known as the tramp stamp, yes. Don't worry, it didn't happen, so I don't have to pull my shirt down to hide anything from view. I thought about how my life is now, about how I used to think it would be later. Later when I was grown up, as in: thirty years old.
It worked out, according to the counter I have grown up, I am thirty. At my graduation, my Dutch teacher said: “I hope not to hear much from you, but to read about you.” Now I think Amayzine is not really his genre (he was certainly over fifty back then, including a toupee), but in theory, it could work. He saw me as a writer, I still saw myself as a sly marketer. He was right. I did know that I wanted to do something cool with my life at thirty, definitely didn't want kids yet and hoped to have a love, but the way it is now feels strange. And when I think back to my fourteen-year-old self, I wonder how it is that I ended up so okay. Different from what I might have thought back then, with bumps and lumps along the way for sure, but maybe even better. Oh, I truly thought that by now I had seen all sorts of indigenous places live, I also envisioned myself at least two clothing sizes smaller, there should have been a loyal four-legged friend that I would effortlessly combine with my full-time job and my boyfriend would now be mine for about three years instead of nine. Let's just say I take those last things for granted. I am a happy person.
Remember the image of everything that has worked out and turn it around. As in: thirty is completely not what you thought it would be. No beloved, your job is crying out for help and you drag yourself to the office every day, your dog has passed away and you have children but they can go to daycare full-time according to you. Then you get the movie ‘Everything in Order’. Four girlfriends who stumble upon a video from high school and are not at all what they wanted to be, but are going to change that. Together, before the last one turns thirty. I was almost rolling on the floor laughing at the trailer, also just from recognition, and you probably were too. Just take a look for yourself and go see it in the cinema. From October 12, you can do that. How convenient, because I will just be back from vacation. I’ll reserve a spot.
