What Entering Your Thirties Feels Like When Life Didn’t Go as Planned

Next month will be my 31st birthday, and I’m not looking forward to it. I don’t feel like I’ve accomplished much in life. At least, I’m not alone in this feeling.

TL;DR

• Life is hard for everyone in their 30s on YouTube.

• My mom and dad seemed to have it easier: cars, a home, two kids, and a grandmother to care for on one income.

• I tried to be successful like my mom — good grades, working early — but it got me nowhere fast and left me with PTSD from insurance careers.

• My parents died in their fifties, I almost died from a coma, and I was left with debt and crippling depression. I got married, can’t find a job though I’m trying, my dream of being a writer hasn’t panned out, my husband hates his job but works for rent and food we can’t afford, and despite prayer I feel weaker than ever.

The Bed-Rotting Effect

While scrolling YouTube Shorts doing what the young people call “bed-rotting,” I came across a reel about a thirty-something with no job, living at home with their parents, and not wanting to be in that position. I thought it was a one-off, but you know how the algorithm is if you stay on one video too long.

Within a couple of days, I had thirty, thirty-one, thirty-two, and thirty-five year olds looking at me from their thumbnails with defeated faces and similar messages — failed twenties leading into adulthoods with no kind of life, at least not the life their parents would’ve had in their thirties.

Then my wheels started turning, and I thought about my own parents.

Once Upon a Time, Not Long Ago

My dad was a nepo-baby — my grandparents got him out of trouble until they could pawn him off on my mother, financially and physically. But before all that, he had a car, a family-owned apartment he rented for chump change in New York, a job on Wall Street, and a business degree from SUNY.

My mom, on the other hand, had a harder life. She emigrated from England with my much older grandmother and her older sister, lived between New York and Florida as a kid, moved to New York as an adult, found a job at Home Depot, had me after dating my dad for a year and a half, and moved to Florida to get away from him. He followed us, and she managed to buy a house, take care of my grandmother, my father, me, and later my baby brother — all on her $75k salary in the ’90s. She even managed to own two cars, though she later sold one because my dad didn’t know how to drive. She did all this before turning thirty-nine.

Was it difficult? Did she work nights and sometimes miss my school field trips? Yes. But in my eyes she was the dream — the goal, the person I wanted to be and one day surpass.

Rise and Grind

I listened to the lies — and even my own lies — and planned my future: be amazing, not just good at school; go to college sooner since my parents couldn’t afford it after the economy failed the first time; get a job as soon as possible. I was on the books by eleven, first as a tutor and then as an employee at an insurance company (which triggers PTSD in me to this day). I planned to grind, save all my money, and be successful enough to repay my mother’s kindness.

Then life grabbed me by the throat, punched me in the face, and when I fell to the ground it kicked me in the kidneys and spat on me before crushing my hand so I couldn’t call the cops.

The Birth and Death of a Dream

After three failed promotion attempts across different insurance jobs and a stint in IT that I thought would pivot me to millions like the radio and YouTube commercials promised, I was still a broke adult — but now I had two disabled parents to care for, both in their fifties.

My dad was a drug abuser, so that’s how he lost his money. My mom suffered two near-fatal, non-fault car accidents that damaged her body permanently. I tried to juggle caring for them while adding side hustles. What if I could write for a living?

I joined Medium, used social media, wrote, self-published, and sold fewer than 200 copies of a sci-fi novel in 2019. I was discouraged from continuing because work was too stressful, money wasn’t coming in fast enough, and my mom was a hater (later I learned she was just jealous of my dreams).

After the virus that changed the world hit, I still couldn’t work from home and get a much-needed break. I was yelled at for wearing a mask at work, I was broker than ever from spending money on masks and groceries, and I was the only person allowed to risk my life every day to drive around. I sort of hoped I’d catch the virus just to end it all.

The End of It All

I wrote about my coma in another post. It happened in the spring of 2021. At that point I had medical debt and regular debt from using credit cards to survive while working a dead-end insurance job. My mom pressured me to give her the last of my father’s inheritance — which had been given to me and his two other sons — because even though they’d been divorced ten years, she felt entitled. As soon as I left the hospital and stopped dialysis, I gave her half and asked her not to ask me for any more money.

That money allowed me to pay off cars and finish paying down some, but not all, of my debts. Then I started dating my ex, who became my husband (that’s another story).

My mother was pissed — her cash cow was going to get married and take her money away (less than $10k, mind you). I tried everything to appease her, but it took a family argument and a shattered kitchen table for her to realize I wasn’t a teen anymore and I wasn’t working to take care of her. I wanted a life for myself now because my old one wasn’t working out (obviously — a coma at twenty-six?).

I moved out at twenty-seven. Her landlord wrongfully evicted her in November; she had a month to move that same year. I had no room for her but helped her apartment hunt. We got scammed by a Nigerian pastor, and it broke her heart that the building wasn’t really for rent. Two days before her eviction, in December, she died from unknown causes at fifty-nine.

What Does This Have to Do With Being Thirty?

After turning thirty, everything that used to matter stopped feeling important. I knew something was wrong when I didn’t want to live anymore. I sought serious help for that. But even after getting help, I still ask myself: what’s the point?

Work hard to buy crap, live for a while, get sick, and die.

Even as a religious person — and I think I’m pretty religious — I have to pray and ask for a reason to get up in the morning, a reason to be thankful for what I do have. No, I don’t have a job. My apartment is crawling with pests from my neighbors no matter how much I mop and spray. My husband hates his job and only works to cover rent and food. I’m looking for work because I don’t want to be a burden on him. All the while, bills pile up, debt piles up, pests pile up, and I get older and wonder why my mom ever slept with my dad in the ’90s.