I turn 30 in a few days

I woke up the morning of my 26th birthday to write myself a letter for my 30th birthday. I turn 30 in a few days, and I hardly remember what I wrote in that letter.

The imposter syndrome is taking up space as usual. I fight my own thoughts everyday and keep saying “I’m so proud of you” because I don’t have a lot of people in my life to say that to me out loud. My body has permanently changed post Covid and everyday I am grateful for what it does for me while I try to get better at giving it more love and care. I have 3 tattoos which I absolutely love (teenage Troyee is still in disbelief) even though I get quite shy when someone asks me about them.

I am the girl whose parents never allowed sleepovers but allowed her to move to a different continent to study. It was ten years ago. A decade of living in a new country, building a life, a career, a home that I am so grateful that I can call mine now. I had a sense of not belonging from a very early age and therapy made me understand it comes from my childhood. I used to be sad and angry about things and question myself for being too needy, too sensitive. But I do that a lot less now. My brain has finally been rewired into focusing on what I can give myself instead of what I should have been given by others. There is more perspective, more calmness. The savior complex has thankfully also started to fade away, but there is still some more work left to do.

I feel so grown up that I don’t even remember the girl who packed her entire life and left ten years ago, and chances are I won’t remember this version of myself ten years into the future either. This is why I am writing this today, sitting in the apartment that has seen me go through it all – first pay cheque, countless meals alone, falling in love, heartbreak, laughing with friends, grief, two degrees, and a fucking pandemic.

I don’t know what the new decade has in store for me. There is a lot more at stake now than ten years ago and it is scary. But I am excited knowing that I have worked on myself all my 20s and if there is one thing I can rely on in times of distress (other than Bob’s Burgers) is myself. “Too sensitive” was never a curse but I just needed >29 years around the Sun to start being okay with it.