16 Things I’m Irrationally Scared of Now That I’m 30

This year I turned 30 and promptly aged myself out of the website I founded for twenty-somethings. I am choosing to ignore this entirely, and have armed myself with a bounty of puppy pictures to distract any coup that comes my way. Initially this was the only major concern I had about leaving my twenties behind. But as I approach my ninth month as a 30 year old, I’ve realized I’ve gained my fair share of irrational 30-year-old fears. Granted some of these began percolating in my twenties, but didn’t become full out phobias until now.

Red-eye flights

I’ve spent the last four years taking red eye flights to London, and each year it’s gotten a little harder to jump off that plane and go hard for another 12 hours. With another trip coming up, the idea of being awake for 36 hours straight is absolutely mind boggling impossible.

Escrow

Despite having this explained to me by multiple financial advisors, I still don’t get it. All I really get is that this is the part of home buying where all my hopes and dreams can go crashing down around me and I lose a house it’s taken me eight years to save up for. Pretty sure escrow is a bitch.

Standing room only concerts

Listen, the opening band has a 98% chance of sucking, and I cannot handle having smelly bodies pressing up close to me for the entire length of the show. Personal space is a preference, and frankly I’ve been hunching over a laptop for too many years now to want to stand up for five hours straight.

Caffeine after 8 p.m.

Somehow I went from being that person who could mainline tea until it came out my ears to the caffeine sensitive. Now I’m strictly herbal after 8 p.m. unless I feel like being awake until dawn. Unfortunately that also means I’m more or less incapable of staying up past 12 because of lack of caffeine.

TV shows that start after 11 p.m.

John Oliver, I love you, I want to watch you and bask in your perfection, but for the love of God can we please start at 10? Monday mornings are a bitch, OK?

Growing goat hair

I have been blessed with light hair that generally means I don’t have to worry about excess body hair. I can skip a few days shaving my legs and you won’t even notice. But that all stopped when suddenly I started growing billy goat bright red chin hair. Not a lot. Just rogue long ass ones that I can’t see until suddenly they’re curling around my chin like Rip Van Winkle. It’s awesome. Except not.

Non-gaseous bodily noises

Somehow my body has decided to become its own one-woman orchestra. My stomach gurgles like a fish tank, my knees crackle like cereal, my neck pops like a balloon, and I make so much noise just existing I keep myself up at night.

Screwing up other people’s kids

As the babies start to takeover the friend group and I remain childless, all my years of nannying seems to disappear. How do I interact with their kids when I’m not in a position of authority? What if I say the wrong thing? Hold them the wrong way? Inadvertently have the wrong stance on the latest social media parenting trend?

Being the same age as the Sex and the City crew

If there’s one thing HBO taught me, it’s that your 30s are about nonstop sex, relationship angst, living beyond your means, and abject selfishness. There’s just a lot of pressure to become a horrible person and I don’t know if I have it in me.

My period becoming a blockbuster super villain

“It won’t be so bad when you get older” they said. “The worst is when you’re an adolescent and hormonal all the time.” They lied—that was a load of horse shit. Every year my period has gotten worse. I bleed as if I’m being butchered and I have cramps during PMS, the first two days of menstruation, and again to a crippling level at the end. And now I even get them during ovulation. If this trend continues, I’m going to be one giant cramp machine for 30 days a month.

Having my ovaries be dinner conversation

For some reason no one bothers you about your fertility in your twenties. They generally consider that if someone even looks at you, your nubile ovaries will get knocked up. Then suddenly it becomes a constant source of conversation the second you turn 30, even if you haven’t even thought about kids yet.

Being aged out of CW shows

Listen, most of those actors are older than I am by now even if they’re stuck permanently in high school. And most prime time shows suck and CW shows have really good music. But lately, as much as it pains me to say, I’m having a hard time being able to enjoy them. They’re still so bad they’re good, but I’m about unable to deal with the youthful angst. Sigh.

Getting stuck living in Trumplandia forever

Aren’t your twenties when you’re supposed to be irresponsible and take big risks like moving abroad and making questionable financial decisions? Well I spent my twenties saving so I could do these things and now the more feasible it is financially, the more difficult it is to do it and risk that financial security. Apparently Fight Club was right, eventually your possessions end up owning you.

Growing extra body parts from the chemicals I put on my face

This might come more from the Internet constantly telling me that every little thing is trying to kill me, but I’m about at the point that unless it came from the earth and not a lab, it’s not getting slabbed on my face. The last time I let chemicals near me, I had my eyebrows waxed and grew a damn cyst on my face. My skin is apparently old and frail now, I’ll pass on the latest serums and stick to the beeswax bases.

Getting too comfortable with myself

There’s liking yourself and being happy on your own, and then there’s being set in your ways and unable to adapt to other people at all. The longer I work from home and the less I interact with folks in person, the more socially awkward and uncomfortable I get. I’m set in my schedule and I don’t like change, and that doesn’t bode well as I get older.

Getting dumber

I came across one of my old undergraduate papers while cleaning recently and it may as well have been in Russian. I couldn’t understand it, I didn’t remember the concepts I learned while writing it. And sadly it wasn’t that it was secretly shit. It was an A+ paper that got me into the Oxford program. I’m just infinitely dumber now. I should have realized this was occurring when I stopped being able to read history books with any distractions, or when the aphasia gaps when speaking started stretching from seconds to minutes.