Hello, Three-Oh — Suzey Ingold

Hello 30, this is 29. The last hours of 29, the last hours of a decade. A decade of such an immense amount of growth and change and discovery that I couldn’t hope to summarise it. Nor, perhaps, would I even want to.

A year ago, I wished for the end to a bad year, for the promise of a fresh beginning. Now, I wish only, as I may continue to for years to come, for more time. To not wish away the hours, however difficult or bad or boring they may be, but to take each one. Because they cannot be taken for granted, and each moment passed is another that I cannot get back.

Time is an odd thing, so incomprehensible to the human mind, as much as we may try. I think back to a year ago, when I promised to write more again, only for the minutes and hours to disappear into a wasteland of many months spent either working, or travelling, almost a stranger to my own home for how little I saw of it. I think back to six months ago, when I summited Mount Kilimanjaro, an experience that now somehow feels as though it belongs to another lifetime, or another person entirely.

We overestimate time. Five, six years ago, I would have said that by 30, I would be married, surely; likely with a child on the way, if not already a mother. My life is as far from what I expected of it at this age as it could be, and yet I don’t long for what I don’t have, and I don’t regret the path that has brought me here.

Here, to Florence, a city with which I already have a story. Joined by a handful of friends from across my world, to celebrate in some little corners of this city that I came to love on my last visit here. I am no less surrounded by love, as a single woman nearing 30. I am no more lacking in fulfilment, even as my path takes me to place that I had not expected.

There will come a time for me that is right for my quiet, wooden house away from the city bustle, with a family of my own, and room to host the world that I have met along the way beneath my eaves. There will come a time where I write these letters and all I hope for is the time to enjoy the life exactly as it is, unchanged, unassuming. There will come a time when I won’t spend the hours before my birthday lugging a giant rucksack around winding cobblestoned streets under the Tuscan sun, wondering if it’s almost time for a spritz.

But it’s not that time yet for me. And it has taken so much time to accept that, and to not feel the failure for it. To not feel as though I am somehow falling behind, or to feel as though somehow I’ve made a mistake along the way; that I must have fallen for some deceptive wrong turning that everyone else managed to avoid. To not just be okay with having wandered in the direction I didn’t plan for, but to be grateful for it. To be appreciative for every opportunity I have and enjoy because of it.

To be able to stroll the streets of Giza one day, perfecting my Arabic for “no, thank you” to keep the vendors at bay, and the next to be zooming through the streets of Rome on the back of a Vespa. To be able to try life in different places and different jobs, developing in each a further sense of self, or skill, or another small building block toward the ever-changing I. To be content with the fact that even the bad days have merit, and that even the wrong choices can bring us closer to the right place to be.

So, 30, if there’s one thing I ask of you, it is to not apologise for being who you are at this time. Because you have nothing to prove of yourself to anyone – least of all, to yourself.