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Two decades ago, my mother sent a seemingly forgettable birthday card to a friend.
“Happy 29+ birthday!” she wrote inside. I asked her what she meant, knowing that her friend was well into her 30s.
She explained what she saw as a fact of life – all women wished to be in their 20s forever, never crossing the threshold into “old” territory. It made sense – 29, the designated “final age,” was the year my mother had me.
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I turned 29 years old on July 19, the oldest I will ever be if my mother’s throwaway remark on a birthday card 20 years ago is to be believed. Thus begins the countdown to my 30s, when I might finally accept that the jokes about me being “unc” are true. I’m the first year of Gen Z, the generation born between 1997 and 2012.
Gen Z is reportedly terrified of turning 30. The things that define adulthood – stable careers, home ownership, marriage and children – are no longer set milestones for 20-somethings. We're more likely than other generations to have a mental health diagnosis, which certainly adds to our feelings of despair and fear of the future. By 35, polling shows, Gen Z thinks you're over the hill.
Despite the fact that many older adults believe Gen Z is stuck in perpetual childhood, I can see that we’re getting older.
All of the boyfriends I’ve had to this point are married. The girl I celebrated my 13th birthday with has a newborn. The toddler I babysat in high school is 16 years old. I’ve become one of the oldest coworkers in the newsroom, the friend who finished school before the COVID-19 pandemic began, the person who remembers what it was like on Instagram before Mark Zuckerberg bought it.
There are parts of me that haven’t changed since I was a teenager. My eyeliner, the jet-black wings framing my face most days, has remained unchanged since freshman year of high school. I have the same Instagram and Facebook accounts I created in my childhood bedroom. My music taste remains rooted in the indie pop/alt rock genres. Yet my life looks drastically different than it did at 15, 20 or even 25 years old.
Thinking back to my teenage years
I spent my teenage years wishing to be older, wiser and far away from my hometown.
At 17, my first therapist told me that I wouldn’t be the girl living in her childhood home for the rest of her life. I knew this to a degree, if only because my mother’s favorite pastime was looking at real estate listings online. None of these homes would be ours – the 2008 recession had hit my family like it did everyone else, and we were still in the process of recovering from it. For the most part, I thought I was doomed to haunt my childhood home forever.
Then I got into college – a few colleges, all far away from my small town and holding the promise of a new life. My life could really change – I didn’t have to be the teenage girl I once believed I was doomed to be for all eternity.
It felt as though my life could begin.
My 20s were a learning curve
I thought I knew everything at 20. I thought my world was always going to look the way it did then.
I woke up on my 20th birthday in the bed of a man who wasn’t quite my boyfriend. I went to my summer class – Introduction to Politics – then went to my magazine internship. It was about that age that I realized writing was the thing I wanted to spend the rest of my life doing. I was learning that my words could resonate with people, even if it was just blog posts about my hometown and college life.
A few months later, I was hospitalized for depression. I checked myself in on a Saturday – the same day as a college football game, where I was expected to be at my restaurant job. I showed up to the emergency room in a short denim skirt and makeup running down my face. Through tears, I told the nurse checking me in that I no longer wanted to be here.
My 20-year-old self was too sad to think about what she wanted 30 to look like. She didn’t think she’d live long enough to see it.
She certainly didn’t think she’d be entering the final year of her 20s living in New York City, writing for a living and enjoying her free time with a group of friends who understand her.
I'm excited for what the world has in store for my 30s
At some point in the past nine years – amid therapy, a few different medications and a lot of growing up – I stopped wanting to die so much and started living.
I live my life as close to what teenage me would have wanted. I like to think she’d find me cool.
The girl who once reblogged photos of New York City on Tumblr finally moved there days after turning 26. She came out to herself that year. She got sober at 27. At 28, she realized she was finally becoming comfortable in her skin. She no longer feels the sting of her college love life, of the friends she lost or the grades she got.
To any member of Gen Z scared about the future, I want you to know that time – the only constant in this world – will heal you. No seriously, it does. The thing you feel is defining your life at 17 won’t define your life at 20, and whatever defines your life at that age will be long forgotten by the time you’re 25.
Maybe, by 29, you’ll realize you are becoming the person you always dreamed of being – even if it took a little longer than you wanted it to.
Despite what my mother once told me all those years ago, I no longer feel like 29 is the oldest I’ll ever be. I feel like it’s just the beginning.
Follow USA TODAY columnist Sara Pequeño on Bluesky: @sarapequeno.bsky.social
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: I thought I knew everything at 20. At 29, I'm glad I was wrong. | Opinion
