I will never forget the true swings of depression in my twenties. By the time this goes up I will be freshly thirty years old and I cannot wait. It’s not that I expect life to suddenly get easier, or that depression and disappointment disappear at thirty. But I feel grateful to be moving on from a chapter that felt so dizzying and raw.

I have been excited to turn thirty starting early on in my twenties. I remember coming home for Thanksgiving not long after graduating college. I had moved from a sunny, vibrant city to a colder, more sterile one, chasing a job I hoped would give me some direction. At the dinner table, surrounded by my family, I felt completely numb. I had no interests to speak of, nothing I was excited about. I felt like a shell. My sister made a joke about someone she knew turning thirty—how terrible that must be—and without thinking I said, “I can’t wait to be thirty.” Even at twenty-two, I knew: whatever this is, I don’t want it.

I was suspicious of the twenties in general. People told me college would be the best years of my life—it wasn’t. Then they said real money and promotions would fulfill me—they didn’t. They promised new cities would fix the rest. They hadn’t. So I started wondering: who were all these people, offering these vague, sweeping truths about how life should feel? Whoever they were—I didn’t trust them.

What I meant then, and what I still mean now, is that I wanted a life that felt more…human. I wanted new experiences to shape me. I wanted to change my mind and then change it again. I wanted to be in situations that challenged me and meet people who challenged my way of thinking. What I received was monotonous days, empty hangovers, and the endless shuffling of papers in Corporate America. This felt like the beginning of the rest of my life.  

The twenties moved forward in all their stumbling mediocrity. Every system—work, healthcare, relationships—revealed itself to be far more broken than I’d imagined. I’ll never forget my first “free” preventative doctor’s appointment that cost me $340 because I mentioned having a cold at the time. 

The twenties have a way of teaching you just how much you don’t know, and how fast you’re expected to figure it out anyway.

I hoped that by thirty, I’d stop feeling like every mistake was a public faceplant and every heartbreak meant I’d never be okay again. I’m not saying that won’t ever happen again, but the edges have softened. I’ve grown more comfortable with myself, and less interested in pretending the status quo works well enough for me.

What I will always appreciate about that twenties shine that never fully arrived was I got to make my own world. I got to build my own timelines for what I wanted my life to look like. I ditched the fake luster of being a cog in a corporate machine. I left so many cities and made new friends that reflected the kind of person I was and wanted to be. I realized I was a queer woman who did not want kids and that blew up the rest of what was my ‘ticking biological clock.’ It was the best of times, it was the worst of times! But I was finally and truly free. 

In that same vein, I never planned to build something like saymore. It came from tuning into the parts of myself I used to try to quiet—the parts that craved connection, honesty, and something more meaningful than just checking boxes. I spent so much time chasing safety, doing what was “smart,” trying to follow the five year plan. But eventually I realized: it’s more worthwhile to take risks and lots of them. Saymore is my contribution to the internet, of shaping it into something softer, more reflective, more human.

Whatever this next chapter holds for thirty year old Steph, I know this: I will do it my way. There will still be all of the feelings from the twenties but this time I will have more confidence and self trust. And for whatever is still ahead—for me, for saymore—this space will hold what it needs to and we will be more than okay.

So no, I don’t dread turning thirty. I welcome it. I’m not going away—I’m just getting started.