turning thirty

rambling thoughts on the turn of a decade

Right now I have friends squeezing toothpaste onto purple toothbrushes and kissing little cheeks goodnight. I have friends lying on a couch, a newborn in their arms, willing them to sleep while the television flickers quietly. I have friends sliding open van doors, dropping their bare feet onto warm tar, tiptoeing over to a bush for an evening wee. I have friends lifting keys of white powder to their noses and friends swearing off the drink; friends mid-divorce and friends falling in love. I sit and listen to their stories – a cacophony of laughter and tears – and am reminded that there is no one way of doing anything at all.

The month before I turned thirty, I spent a weekend visiting my parents. My parents have cultivated a burgeoning veggie patch in their regional suburban garden, and a big part of our relationship involves the parallel activities that come with that: digging, pruning, planting, cooking, canning. On this particular weekend, the town was due for their first frost of the season. After several phone calls with Mum in the leadup, we crafted a long list of things we could do together that would maximise the longevity of the remaining produce and ensure the garden was prepared for the quiet winter ahead.

Over a few days, we picked armloads of basil and made a dozen jars of pesto for the freezer. We had a lamb delivered from the local farmer, which we used to make lamb stock and stew, pressure canning it with handfuls of homegrown tomatoes and herbs. With the season’s tomato crop (which Mum had been freezing in bags every week), we slowly peeled off the skins and pushed them into glass jars that had once held last season’s preserves. We made a dozen jars of tomato chutney, too.

We processed a batch of willow for weaving, harvested pumpkins, and prepared several beds for the quieter season, hauling out roots and pruning the rhubarb on our hands and knees. Dad and I built a loom together, so I could turn the scraps of yarn from knitting projects into other handmade items. In the moments in between I read in the bath, or sat out on the back deck with my grandmother’s spinning wheel and learned to spin rovings, kicking the foot pedal and watching the fibre spin and suck, spin and suck.

On Saturday morning, after two days of work, I woke to a message from my landlords. My studio, four hours east, had been flooded after heavy storms. My laptop was found submerged, my rugs black with mud, my fridge and vacuum cleaner destroyed. And my books, all 500 of them, wet and sodden and unsalvageable. There were books inscribed with letters, old editions bought at thrift stores, books bought overseas and smeared with butter from pastries eaten on Sri Lankan trains. There were self-published books of poetry written by friends and books gifted to me by lovers. Books I had read and re-read as a child. Dog-eared copies of Matilda and The Secret Garden and The Artist’s Way.

The photo, appearing on my iPhone screen, was dark and sad. I took my basket of yarn and a box of preserves and I made the long drive over the Great Diving Range home.

Together with friends Sal and Jess, we washed the skirting boards and mopped the floors. I cried as I threw the soaked spines into the tip, cried for the writers that had understood and managed to articulate my experience of the world so vividly, cried for the memories stored between the pages. I threw out the laptop and the fridge, the camping gear and the heater. I threw out shoes and handbags and art that had become sodden and moldy in a matter of days.

Before each birthday, I spend time writing in my journal. This helps me reframe patterns of thinking, and look at growth and loss and love and change through a lens of gratitude. Amid the mud and construction and the repurchasing of necessary goods, I opened up my Moleskine and indulged in the symbolism of a flood.

While my friends’ lives were swirling around me, heaving with growth and change and opportunity, I was unshackling. Unshackling the scripts I had inherited from culture and religion about where I should be at thirty. Letting go of the stories that had been my anchor, the library I had carried through 14 sharehouses. I could begin my next decade an unmarried, childless renter, with a handful of complex diagnoses and half the meaningful possessions I once had and I could choose to see this as an opportunity, rather than a loss.

~

And then I turned thirty. The morning of, I woke in Sal’s spare room. My backpack was strewn across the floor, the handful of outfits in rotation while I was waiting for the studio to be liveable getting dirtier by the day. The smell of incense seeped in below the door, and I could hear the sound of Sal’s feet pattering across the hall. I crawled out of bed, pulled my hair into a messy bun and left the room. There on the floor, leading to her coffee table, was a trail of my favourite snacks: iced vovos, chuppa chupps, a curly wurly, red licorice. On the table she’d pulled tarot cards, lit candles, opened poetry collections to her favourite stanzas and drawn a picture of us standing on strawberry clouds with walking sticks. I had been living alone for almost nine months (and enjoying the solitude), but waking to the sound of footsteps in the loungeroom and an altar for my 30th birthday reminded me that there’s nothing better than good company and living in relationship with other people.

For years I negated the importance of vulnerable and present friendships. I bled myself dry in all-consuming co-dependent romantic relationships, or found myself slipping into hyper-individualism in a way that made community impossible (both of these are still a risk, always). White Australian culture places such an emphasis on the importance of a partner, and the hierarchy is stifling. We expect a partner to be all things: lover, confidante, intellectual equal, sharer of hobbies, source of laughter, emotional support, financial strategist. With time, our friendships can slip further and further away. Learning from the way people like Sal love, and the way they show up amid their own beautiful romantic relationships, has been one of the most transformative lessons of my late 20s.

~

Growing pains are hard, and there is grief in all of the stretch marks. Grief in the ways I fail people, grief in my failure to act in the face of injustice. Palestine is not free, sovereignty has not been ceded, one of the greatest global powers is about to elect a racist abuser. I am constantly justifing my inaction, intellectualising heartbreak and staying at an arm’s length away from movements that need as much support as they can gather. My privlidege is blinding.

That being said, I feel more equipped to tackle change in the turn of a new decade, and more empowered by a values-aligned community to do so. For the next ten years I hope to devote my time to community care, and to actions that are designed to dismantle oppressive systems and uplift the people and landscapes that deserve protection and love. I have much to unlearn, always, and I am forever challenged by those who are charging forth into places of stickiness and discomfort. I am ready to join them.

I am now back in my little studio, writing this from a bed stationed on new floors. I made a bottle of chilli oil this morning, and I can see the chilli flakes slowly sinking to the bottom of the glass bottle from where I type. Thanks to the generosity of friends and strangers on the internet, my library is back to full health, and the books are back on the floor, stacked under the windowsill. I have much to be grateful for, and I am excited about the unknown ahead.

Thank you, as always, for reading, emailing and sharing parts of your world. I hope to resume regular writing again. x