#goodbye 20s

[heatherandthistles]

Best way to celebrate your 30th birthday, beach and sun ☀️

[333destinyschanging444]

Hello 30!

[solemnlyswear93]

This weekend will be the last one I’ll have in my 20’s (still coming to terms with it 🙈) and I feel like I need to do something “big”, but I really just want to curl up with snacks, my best friend, the K-Drama I’m watching, and too many tacos. 🥹🥲

[lumberjerk]

itsh my borthdaye

[itsgonnabemagne]

August 2023

I said goodbye to my 20s last August and it was such a fun-filled month. Got the chance to spend my birthday weekend in Scotland which I enjoyed with my college best friends J-Anne and Marc, and Deinn who is my cohort-mate slash workmate here in the UK.

This place really made me feel that I am in a different place as we explore the culture behind it - plus, it was the start of the Fringe Festival which is the largest art festival in the world. Too bad we didn’t have much time to watch some shows but the streets of the Royal Mile in Edinburgh was really alive and festive. Naging chaka yung London compared to this city charet. I will surely go back.

Also met up a few times with Harvey who is one of my best friends from Makati just to have a food trip or coffee date. Ewan ko ba kahit lagi kaming galing night duty basta day off, we would explore food markets.

And to make the most of sunny days, my previous workmates from Makati Med (who became our closest friends too) went to celebrate Mawi’s birthday in Camber Sands. After a week, we went hiking in the famous Seven Sisters Chalk Cliffs which was the most exhausting hike of my life hahaha! The supposed to be 3-hour hike turned 6 hours!! If it wasn’t a Harry Potter scene setting, I wouldn’t have joined lol but the view was really breathtaking.

Ending this month with a new tattoo! My highschool friends decided to have koi fish as our friendship tattoo, and I was thinking if I get a bigger one, it has to be more symbolic or meaningful. So here it is:

I heard that in the following months, days would become shorter and colder. Well, summer has been my favorite season so far.

[loved-be-the-leo]

I've opted to post this here as opposed to on my Facebook where so many of my family and friends will see and feel compelled to reply with well intended remarks of support. Here I can hide behind some anonymity like a shield; perhaps someone will read this and see another kindred spirit. Know I see you too, and that I understand in some ways what you're going through.

I'll probably be posting this before my birthday and maybe after will be compelled to delete it; talking myself back from it. From feeling that it's just me being dramatic and invalidating my feelings as I often do because it's easier that way. It's no big deal after all and in the grand scheme of things not all that important. Others are suffering in far worse ways. I know and have told many that their suffering doesn't necessarily invalidate mine and my feelings are valid. Trying to brush them aside doesn't negate that.

So I find myself at a crossroads as I leave my 20s behind me. A decade full of so much change; some good, some bad and some that was just suffering. I graduated college from a university that wasn't the best in the grand scheme of things with a GPA only slightly above average but still high enough that come this fall I'll be beginning a master's program at one of the more prestigious universities in my state. One recognized highly by the industry I make have a career in. I'd also be the first grandchild on both sides of my family to graduate; and on one the only but not the eldest.

I got my first "big girl job", after struggling for over six months to do so thanks to family connections I know helped me which lead to another flavor of imposter syndrome. One that pushed me to work that much harder to prove that I deserved to be where I was. I eventually paid off my student loans thanks to the sudden passing of my grandfather after years of his health degrading. The news of which I got while visiting a friend a mere three days into the trip after breaking up with my boyfriend of 9 months who had been slowly eating away at the progress I had made on my mental health by ignoring my feelings in order to justify his cycling behavior that I had expressed concern about before. It's okay; he didn't have time for me and that was clear on top of the fact certain views he had didn't align with me... Going so far as to insult the fact I had a degree and other concerns I voiced in other areas of our relationship (a story for another time perhaps.)

Before him I lost my second grandmother again; for Alzheimer's had taken her from me years before when she couldn't remember who I was and the anxiety of seeing her in an assisted living home drove a wedge between us whose gap I never managed to breach. I was promoted twice and the joke I made about what if I made 6 figures by 30 turned out not to be a joke. I bought my own at 27 in the middle of my grandmother dying; it's happening today turning into anytime now for over a month who's effect I think can still be felt by my father as his remaining parent's age started to show.

For all intents and purposes my 20s could be seen as mostly good but there's still a part of me that despite myself looks at others. Sees that they're not going through life alone and pushes all I've done to the wayside. The voice that has convinced myself that despite the importance that many put on turning 30 it's no big deal. That I'm not really that big deal and celebrating what accomplishments I have made would come off as arrogant and self centered. That my friends are annoyed whenever I do even when they tell me otherwise.

The pandemic did very little to help many of these feelings; any plans I having made on my birthday even before it falling through. My mother's birthday isn't even a week from mine so often we do things for both; if I'm asked what I want I'm consumed by anxiety as I worry about picking something my mother in particular won't enjoy because- whether intentionally or not I'llet you decide, it'll make me feel guilty.

I'm not entirely sure where I intended to go with this; perhaps I wrote it in the hopes that she posted I might get validation from strangers. Maybe even someone will take time to send kind

words intended to push away the imposter syndrome or the hesitance to talk about my accomplishments in a way not immediately followed by attempts to circumvent then or in annoyance when someone pushes me too far. Or maybe if truly was made just in an attempt for someone to know they're not alone.

[nosnexus]

Farewells at the End of All Things...

[polarsirens]

look i know this was played for physical comedy but. but the k-drama-ness of it all

[mrpoeticjoker]

And just like that, my days being in my 20s were over. Hello 30. 🤙

[glassrooibos]

Look I can’t draw stoats ok IM SORRY OK I still love them

[shanastoryteller]

birthday prompts are open!

send me a 'happy birthday' and a fandom, and i'll write you a three sentence fic. feel free to ask for continuations of past prompts :)

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

last of us tv adaption decided to make a Gay Romance For The Ages out of a Gay Pettiness Subplot and i respect that sm 💘but PLEASE recognize both r valid

[stephreynaart]

I WAS BIRTHED THIS DAY

[sergle]

i was a chihuahua disliker in a past life but have Grown Up since then, but earlier i saw one that made me clench my fists in agony. i wanted her so bad...