Vivian

we just hit 35 recently and, honestly, the amount our life is better compared to a decade ago (or more) is immeasurable. things never stop keep happening, of course, but we have a support network to help us with the heavy lifting, and enough lived experience to know when to deal with something head-on, when to let something slide off our shoulders, and when we need help. so glad we made it this far, tbh.

i was so psyched to turn 30 and now that i've been here for a year it's like 10/10 met or exceeded all expectations. i know what i want and i'm making steady progress towards it. that's a feeling that i literally never had until my late 20s. adulthood is genuinely fantastic

we might just be in our mid 20s ourselves, but with one single exception things have already improved so much just when we went from early 20s to mid 20s. reminders like this that things only get better from here (which we already see how they will, now that we're finally figuring out roughly what we want) is just. perfect. makes us happy to have made it through that time. we can't wait to see what the next five years will bring, personally.

A tough, but sometimes necessary experience is the number of people who will come and go from your life. So many relationships gone that were contingent on proximity or being in a transitory place. It’s made more surreal when combined with gains, the people who will matter going forward. My instincts were shit, I couldn’t trust I would stay with the right people, but time bore out what I could never have imagined in the nadir of my 20s.

This is SO TRUE, even with a bunch of shitty stuff happening including a global pandemic, my 30s were so much better than my 20s and I'm looking forward to my 40s (starting week after next!) being even better

I was unemployed until i was 24 so the time between that and graduation was the worst part of my life, stuck at home with mom and a judgemental stepdad. Moved out a year after getting the job and have actually been able to Live since then.

It's a mixed blessing.

But, like, I found my direction, my sense of self, and my community around age 29 - when my at-the-time cisgender peers were calling that the age of 'gay death'. Jokes on them, estrogen and confidence are both magic.

The grind sucks ass, don't get me wrong, but the found fam, the connections, the direction and especially feeling way comfier in my own damn body? It's a heckuva lot more worth it than my teens were.