30 seemed very old to me when I was in my late teens and early twenties. It seemed like a sort of deadline for turning into a real adult. By that time, I thought, I'd have my Ph.D., and I'd be struggling to find a job as a professor in a tight job market, and maybe I'd be married, and maybe I'd even be trying to have children. But the gap between the things I thought I'd be doing and the things I actually am doing doesn't entirely surprise me. Things change, and they always have, and I learned even as an elementary school student that no matter where I thought I would be in a couple of years, the landscape could change (quite literally) before I'd even figured out where I was.

It would be nice, I think sometimes, if I had managed to maintain the momentum I built up during my first four years of grad school. If I felt more sure of myself. If I had somehow been transformed into a woman who feels together. On top of things. Someone who never floats directionless, or drinks too much, or smokes like Keith Richards. Someone who knows why she does everything she does.

But I wouldn't trust anyone who said they met all of their own standards, and besides—I've gotten better at love, and at listening, and at remembering there's more to me than what other people say I'm good at. I see different things now when I look around, and I can grow flowers.

So, no, it isn't what I thought I'd be doing that seems strange. It's the way that there's no connection between the way I thought I'd feel and the way I do feel. Even stranger is the fact that I don't know what I thought would be in store for me—I just guessed that at some point, certainly by 30, I'd be grown up and I'd know it.

I once had a conversation with some friends who had recently conceived their daughter. That was their big news; mine was that Jeff and I were thinking about buying a home.

"This is all very bizarre," I said to J. "I think everyone must know that I'm a big fraud who's just playing house."

"And M. and I just successfully played Doctor," J. responded.

I think it's that disconnect, more than anything else, that makes 30 a difficult birthday for so many people. It's not actually feeling old, I don't think. It's impossible to ignore the signs that we are older than we used to be, whether it's the little crease between your eyes that doesn't smooth out after you've been squinting, or the first time you go several weeks without being asked for identification at the liquor store, or realizing that people who were born when you were in high school now have driver's licenses, or the fact that turning on the radio can make you decide the world's going to hell in a handbasket, or the glimpse you catch of your hand as you're reaching for a pencil. You see that the skin looks different, even if you're the only person who would notice. Such things don't really make you feel like you're halfway to the rest home, though they might be annoying, worrisome, or even astonishing when they happen.

It's the disconnect—the fear that at any moment, you'll suddenly feel your 19 year-old mind's version of 30. You don't know what that is, but it sounds awfully ominous. And I'm realizing, nearly seven months into being 30, that it isn't going to happen. If it does, it won't happen suddenly, and it won't be what I imagined at all. While I knew a lot when I was 19, I didn't know a damned thing about this, and I suspect I won't truly feel old until I stop surprising myself. I also suspect that I'll keep doing that for a very, very long time.