Ever since my about 4 months into 28, I've been looking forward to turning 30. Despite what seemed like genuine freak-outs among my friends who had already celebrated the big 3-0, I knew it would be different for me. After all, my twenties have been hard and confusing, uncomfortable and awkward, and I've been ready to put it all behind me and start a new decade with a clean slate. Not only that, but the anxieties that seem to have plagued my friends months or weeks before their 30th birthdays are things I don't worry about! Or at least, that's what I thought.
And then, about three months ago, I started freaking the fuck out. It came on fairly slowly and unassuming. First, I was anxious about finishing my thesis on time and getting my MA by the end of the summer. Then I was worried about finding work and paying back my loans and still affording my booze habit and cute shoes. And as the summer wore on, my thirtieth birthday looming closer and closer (tomorrow!), everything in my life suddenly fell under the microscope of re-examination. Issues that previously only sort of bugged me, became the absolute bane of my existence. The extra five pounds I carry around my middle plagued me each and every morning as I dressed. My apartment suddenly seemed too small, my savings account non-existent, my education a waste of time and money. Everywhere I turned, everyone in my life, everything around me just represented one more way I was failing as a human being.
"I'm supposed to be more than this," I said to a friend recently, "At thirty, I'm supposed to have something in my life I feel good about. Something! And I have nothing, just nothing!" I wailed dramatically.
I was never someone who really imagined what my life would be like at 30. I've never pictured a wedding for myself, or thought I ought to have a baby or own my own place, or even have a successful career by a certain age. Two years ago, I would have told you that if these things are meant to happen for me, they will unfold organically, and that I was happy just opening myself to opportunities and possibilities. But lately, what I always considered society's fucked-up expectations and perceptions of "success" have seeped into my own ideals and thoughts. It wasn't enough anymore that I was writing for fun, that I was enjoying the outlet of my blogs and the writing opportunities I pursue elsewhere: I should be writing for lots of money! Why am I not a better writer yet? Why am I not widely published? Why am I not celebrated among the masses? This arrogant way of thinking bled into other self-perceptions: my body image (which is usually so healthy!), my love life (Why is dating only getting harder the older I get? Why do all the good men seem taken? Where is my One and why haven't I found him yet?), and then my hair. Oh, my hair.
It was as if that terrible mullet cut was a physical representation of my internal agony and the feeling that I lacked any control in my life. Even with the best intentions, with a picture in hand of what I wanted, things turned out so drastically different, and there was nothing I could do to change it. For the past two months, I've just been putting up with having a hairstyle I hated, and then over this past weekend, I just couldn't stand it any longer, and in this frantic melt-down of exploding emotions, I started chopping at my hair, and with every snip, I cried out all my frustrations and feelings of inadequacy, anxieties that I'm a failure because at 30 my life won't be perfect (like there's an expiration on figuring things out, like at a certain age, we're done evolving and growing and defining who we are) until I barely had any tears -- or any hair -- left.
Someone told me recently that this thing happens almost the moment you turn thirty where you realize that the failures and set-backs and disappointments are just as beautiful in the mosaic of a life that's been carefully and thoughtfully cultivated. At thirty you finally understand the mistakes are just as important as the successes and that this life that seems so fucked up under the microscope of close examination is really quite lovely in its larger picture.
And maybe, if you're like me, you realize that even a bad haircut is just...a bad haircut, that it will grow out, and that you'll adapt. Maybe it's not what you asked for, and not what you pictured for yourself, and maybe you still even hate it, biut, good god, it isn't a death sentence, and hopefully, when it's all said and done and you've had a professional stylist go ahead and "just get rid of it all," you can take a deep breath and decide that a 
clean slate is better than a messy one.
And if that doesn't work, there's always gin. Lots and lots of gin. And hats! Thank God.
