Things I Was Sure About At Thirty That I'm Not Sure About Now

At thirty I had a list.

I didn’t write it down, but I carried it around like it was written down, which is worse, because you can’t lose a thing you never put on paper.

The first thing on it was that hard work was basically fair. Not perfectly fair, I wasn’t a child about it, but fair enough that if you put the hours in, the hours showed up later wearing a different outfit and paid you back. I believed effort was a currency that converted cleanly.

I’m not sure about that anymore.

I’ve watched people work themselves down to the bone and get nothing. And I’ve watched other people get handed the whole bakery for showing up once with a nice smile. I don’t think the universe is rigged exactly. I think it’s just a lot more weather than I wanted it to be. You can sail well and still get the wrong wind. At thirty that idea would have felt like an excuse.

Now it just feels like looking out the window.

I was also sure I knew what I wanted, which is funny to type. I had a shape in my head of the life that was coming, and I was so confident in the shape that I spent years pushing toward its corners. Got most of them, too. And then I stood inside the finished shape and felt this strange flatness, like walking into a room you decorated entirely from a magazine photo.

Everything correct. Nothing breathing.

What I’ve come around to, slowly, is that I didn’t actually know what I wanted. I knew what I was supposed to want, and I’d gotten so good at wanting it that I mistook the fluency for truth. Those are different things. Took me an embarrassing while to feel the seam between them.

There’s one that still gets me.

At thirty I was sure that the people who’d hurt me had done it on purpose. That there was intent down at the bottom of it, a little engine of malice running while they smiled at me. And some of them, sure. But most of them I think were just scared. Or tired. Or carrying something I couldn’t see, and I happened to be standing where it spilled. That’s not me forgiving everyone.

Some of it I’ll never square.

It’s more that I’ve stopped assuming the world is full of villains who picked me specifically. Mostly it’s full of people barely holding their own thing together, knocking into each other in the dark. Including me. Especially me, some years.

I was certain that changing your mind was a kind of weakness.

That the strong move was to plant your flag and defend it, that consistency was the same as integrity. I really believed those were the same word. They’re not even cousins. I’ve met people who never changed their minds about anything and they didn’t seem strong to me at all when I finally looked closely. They seemed stuck.

Like a clock that’s right twice a day and proud of it.

The people I trust most now are the ones who can say, quietly, I used to think this and I don’t anymore, without it costing them anything. That turns out to be the expensive thing. Saying it cheaply.

There’s a smaller one, almost silly. At thirty I was sure I’d have my feelings figured out by now. That somewhere up ahead was a version of me who’d processed everything and arrived at a calm flat lake of a self.

I’m here now, more or less at the age I imagined, and I’m still surprised by myself constantly. Still get blindsided by an old song. Still want things I can’t justify. Still feel fourteen for a full ten seconds when someone I respect looks disappointed. I thought the feelings would resolve. Instead I just got a little more room to hold them while they don’t.

I won’t pretend this all adds up to wisdom, because that’s the kind of clean ending that would make the whole thing false.

If anything I’m less sure now than I was at thirty about almost everything that matters, and the strange part is that it feels better, not worse. Lighter. At thirty the certainty was a kind of armor and I didn’t notice how much it weighed until I started setting pieces of it down. I keep waiting to feel naked without it.

Mostly I just feel like I can move.

So I don’t have a list anymore. Or I have one, but it’s written in pencil now, and I’ve made my peace with the eraser. That might be the only thing I’m surer about than I was.

Everything else, I’m holding loosely.