The wrong timeline.
On growing older when you're already at a big age.
It was my birthday yesterday. Exciting stuff, I get to grow a year older and people ask me if I’m doing anything special on my day off and I get messages and cards and calls reminding me that a lot more people than I realize know I exist and are happy that I’m here. As a kid, my birthday was always really fun, even though I was left out of school festivities (summers, am I right?). Sometimes I’d be on vacation, other times it was backyard pool hangs, then as I got older it was driving around smoking weed on some corn-riddled road, drinking in bars, finding our way from Roscoe’s to Trader Todds when nobody lived here and we didn’t know where we were going, house parties and bowling alleys and beach time—endless celebration of love and life.
How does it feel to be 31? It feels
31. thirty one. THIRTY one. 3-1. THIRTY ONE. Thirty One? tHiRtY oNe. Thirty ONE. ~thirty one~ thirtyonethirtyonethirtyone THIRTy one. The big three one! THIRTY ONE. THIRTY-ONE THIRTY ONE thirty one thirty one??????? THIRTY ONE!!!!! thirty and one. Thirty ONEEEEEEE thirty one THIRTY ONE thirty ONE THIRTYONE thirty!!! one!!!! Thirty-one. Thirty-One. 31. thirty one. THIRTY one. 3-1. THIRTY ONE. Thirty One? tHiRtY oNe. Thirty ONE. ~thirty one~ thirtyonethirtyonethirtyone THIRTy one. The big three one! THIRTY ONE. THIRTY-ONE THIRTY ONE thirty one thirty one??????? THIRTY ONE!!!!! thirty and one. Thirty ONEEEEEEE thirty one THIRTY ONE thirty ONE THIRTYONE thirty!!! one!!!! Thirty-one. Thirty-One.31. thirty one. THIRTY one. 3-1. THIRTY ONE. Thirty One? tHiRtY oNe. Thirty ONE. ~thirty one~ thirtyonethirtyonethirtyone THIRTy one. The big three one! THIRTY ONE. THIRTY-ONE THIRTY ONE thirty one thirty one??????? THIRTY ONE!!!!! thirty and one. Thirty ONEEEEEEE thirty one THIRTY ONE thirty ONE THIRTYONE thirty!!! one!!!! Thirty-one. Thirty-One.
The big shift in age happened last year, when a two became a three and suddenly the amount of people who wanted to look at my Tinder profile changed drastically. 30 was doable. We still can, like in the movies, be “thirty, flirty, and thriving” but what happens the next year? With every new age I become and the number grows there is an addendum to my identity. I’m not just thirty anymore, I’m thirty AND something else. I need to be something else. Someone else.
31 was the age that my parents met each other. Late to the marriage game themselves (that was at 35) I’m on track to beat them at their own game. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve used my parents as a good metric for how my own timeline can go. Sure, I’m not doing the same as everybody else, but my parents were able to find each other later in the game. As I am now growing older and surpassing my parents in age as they hit their milestones while I miss, the comparison is less reassuring and more just straight competitive comparison. I wanted to beat the clock and the clock instead beat me.
Their story isn’t exactly good, which is why comparison to them is a pretty big waste of time. When I tell people how old my parents were when they met each other and had their first kid, they say something like, “That’s how you do it. Wait until you’re more mature and financially responsible before settling down and having kids. I wish my parents did it like that.” And those people are not stupid, exactly, but ignorant.
My own parents are a good example of why older doesn’t always mean better. Sure, they had ten years on most parents of my classmates but they were poorer and less in control of their lives than most others. My dad had a knack of making a lot of money all at once and then spending it on business ventures that didn’t pan out, on top of having a bunch of medical issues with no health insurance—and he didn’t reach the Find Out stage of Fucking Around until my brother and I were old enough to form individual personalities and opinions. When my parents were 31, they were able to go on trips together and buy a house and felt like the world could be anything for themselves and their future kids they were definitely having together. For me at 31, I’m paying for my parents’ mistakes while struggling to be much of anything at all.
Not everyone exists on the same linear path. There are general guidelines, such as when people go to school and start working. Then there are more aspirational benchmarks such as when people in their twenties usually get into their first long-term relationship, buy property, and/or level up in their careers. I was always a little behind my high-achieving peers: I struggled to find a job that pays, I lived with my parents for years after college, barely do I have a driver’s license, and I’ve never had a secure romantic relationship that lasted a long time. I’m not unique in any of this—even other people I have gone through something similar, the painful ebbs and flows of living in a world that hates you and is designed to keep you barely staying afloat.
I wasn’t always this way but I’ve very much become an extroverted person. I love going to places and talking to people. And let me tell you, any time I go to places the people I meet are 95 percent going to be the age of 24. It’s just me and a bunch of 24 year-olds going to places. Everyone else seems to just be at home. I didn’t even go to places when I was 24! And so I was doomed to fail from the start, if you want to believe The Timeline.
The Timeline exists purely to make me feel like shit. About myself, about aging, about how I’m not able to do life the way that I’m “supposed” to. Other people, even ones close to me, believe in The Timeline. After doing some light complaining about roommate stuff, a friend point-blank told me that it’s unbecoming of someone in their thirties to still have a roommate and that I need to grow up and live on my own like a real adult, as if the cost of living is just not an issue that affects people who are now considered Old on The Timeline. Four years ago I dated someone who broke up with me because I never had experience in a long-term relationship and they didn’t want to be a first, and that’s only going to be more insane now. I turned down a job offer for the county because I wanted the work from home capabilities that my current job had (in order to do comedy easier) and I got a lot of flack from turning down more money and sTaBiLiTy for a little more time to do what I love to do off the clock. I may be older, but I don’t have a wife, kids, or even a dog to feed so what’s the problem? It doesn’t fit The Timeline.
Am I allowed to go to Scarlet? Everyone there is 24.
But the dancing there seems so fun.
My biggest irrational fear is my birth control (currently IUD) failing on me without me knowing and then I end up with a cryptic pregnancy and I go to take a shit in a Six Flags bathroom only to pop out a baby—who definitely probably has fetal alcohol syndrome because I did NOT stop drinking because I didn’t even know I was pregnant—and now I’d have this fucked up baby and no partner to take care of it with me (because of course they’re long gone). And because I’m 31 years old and not in my early twenties or something I’d have no sympathy from anyone as my life as I knew it was not only over but destroyed and I don’t know how I’d come up with the cash and it would be shameful to give up the baby. I’m not a young lady anymore, I’m a full-grown woman and I should already be making enough money to support a child. I should have my life together. This would be my problem now.
Is this absolutely insane of me to think about? Yes. But also, Ilana Glazer of Broad City once wrote the iconic line, “Marriage? Lincoln, I’m only 27. What am I? A child bride?” and now has a movie where she (now in her late-30s) accidentally gets pregnant and decides to keep the baby. I haven’t seen the movie yet, but from the trailer it seems like the pregnancy is a way for her character to get her “shit together” and “figure out” “next steps.” We collectively shame men on dating apps for being 34 and wanting short-term intimacy and we don’t shame women for it because we just expect 34 year-old women to either be married or celibate—there isn’t room in the human brain for someone in their thirties who just kinda wants to eff around and just keep doing what they’re doing. We don’t really ever see in pop culture people who are older and still child-free terminating a pregnancy because they DON’T want to put their wants and needs on hold in order to figure out fitting a child in their life. Because when you’re in your thirties, you should already have done most of the stuff you wanted to do and it’s Baby Time on The Timeline.
Even in comedy, a space where The Timeline hasn’t quite hit the same as it has elsewhere, I’m not the same as my peers—who are coincidentally mostly 24 years old. Even though we started around the same time and have similar experience, I’m still the one people come to with questions about their sets, and look to me for reassurance when they’ve got a big performance, and lifting their insecurities from them in support. I’m the adult in the room, but because I got into the game so late I don’t really have my own adult. To be fair, I’ve never really had an adult. Like, even when I joined a sorority, where you are systematically assigned a big sister as a mentor, mine just dipped and I had to figure it out on my own. And right now I’m back where I always was, except I’m old now so I definitely should just know everything and have it all figured out. If I wanted help with stuff I should have stayed on The Timeline.
How do you justify doing a hard pivot career change with more school that makes less money when you’re in your 30s? By this point your only motivation should be collecting as much wealth as you can so you can purchase a home that will suck all your money away to the point where you will never be able to afford anything outside of the house. That’s what growing up looks like. By 31 you shouldn’t have dreams anymore. Dreams are for young people, but old people like you can’t change for the better just for funsies. Like, if you’re in your thirties and want to start a band, forget it. That’s so embarrassing. You can be in a band in your thirties if you WERE in a band when you were younger, but starting something new? Come on, grow up and do some spreadsheets!
On the other hand, I’ve experienced taking care of aging and dying family members way too early, which is also a disturbance to The Timeline and it makes everyone uncomfortable.
There’s no fixing being on the wrong timeline other than teaching yourself to not care about it too much. This is extremely hard and I am not good at it. My time of being a scrappy young thing has passed and I am just not naturally talented enough to make my 31 year-old ass seem put together or established right from the jump. I’m going to be in this strange, uncomfortable area forever where nothing really feels right. Fortunately for me, the natural order of things will come and disrupt everyone else’s lives in the next 20 or 30 years and then we’ll all be old and equally off-track together.
Right now, it’s a different story. I’m 31 now, and next year I will be 32, then I’ll hit my Jesus year and who knows what kind of shameful acts I will do as the one of the worst thirty-somethings of all time. With maturity creeping up with age, there feels as though there’s less to celebrate about my thirties, coupled with less spontaneity, and honestly just less fun overall. If this is what growing up is supposed to be, I don’t really want to ever participate.