‘I wrote a letter to my 19-year-old self as I teeter on the edge of turning 30’

It’s my birthday today.

I’m entering my dreaded 30th year and can’t help but look back and think: where the hell has all that time gone?

I told a colleague I was having a birthday and he asked: "What would teenage Laura Connor make of this one?"

It got me thinking: on my 29th birthday, as I hurtle towards the three decade milestone, what would I say to my 19-year-old self?

Dear Laura,

Firstly, PLEASE don’t get your nose pierced, that pixie cut really won’t suit you and those Claire’s Accessories statement necklaces will never age well.

But I would also like to say, I think your thirties might be better than your twenties. I am hoping so.

Ok, I admit I’m not 30 for another 364 days, but I get the sense that turning 29 is far worse than the big 3-0.

For women, at least.

By my age, mum had been married for three years, had moved into her second owned house, was nursing a baby son and I was already a twinkle in dad’s eye.

By comparison, I’m single, have moved into my 12th rented home (this one is a bit nicer than those student digs, don’t worry) and am nursing a decade of bad break-ups – and hangovers.

It’s funny how the idea of turning 30 is preferable to clinging desperately onto my twenties. Perhaps it shows how much attitudes have changed since I was your age.

In 2018, women my age are often expected to have at least built the foundations of a domestic set-up like mum’s while also magically edging towards a career-defining promotion.

Oddly though, I feel like my thirties will be the start of my future, rather than the start of the end.

While my twenties have been a personal and professional flux, it suddenly feels like I have reached a bit of a premature plateau.

But 19-year-old Laura: please don’t fear 30.

Thirty feels like a sea change: a new decade of fresh opportunities, greater self-awareness and self-confidence and finally a time to feel like an “adult woman” rather than a “girl”.

A friend told me turning 30 was when she realised that no matter how many times she went to the gym she was never going to have "good legs".

She said she felt comfortable.

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And from the bubble of my immature twenties, women in their thirties seem sassy, sorted and authoritative.

But, crap, that’s a year away!

At the risk of sounding like Britney Spears circa 2001, while I don’t feel quite mature enough to be a woman, my sporadic grey hairs and fine lines remind me I am certainly not a girl anymore.

Twenty nine marks the boundary between youth and adulthood, but I feel neither young nor old. I am sure that age used to be 21 but, as they say, 30 is the new 40.

Today’s twenty-somethings, unlike mum’s generation – and even me 10 years ago, who had just discovered Facebook – have the added pressure of WhatsApp groups and social media sites stuffed to the brim with obsequious self-congratulation that makes you feel as if you’re on a never-ending conveyor belt of one-upmanship.

But it’s a race I can’t even reach the start line of.

So what to you, just starting out at uni and thinking the end of your twenties would be neatly tied up with a pretty bow after a decade of working and partying to oblivion, am I saying?

You probably think I’m frightfully old, but I have also achieved everything I ever wanted when I was a 19-year-old cocky little upstart: I’ve lived away from home, in nine different cities, gained two degrees, ran four marathons and become a national newspaper journalist at a paper I grew up reading.

And despite my love for my home city of Manchester I love living in London – something I always felt was a crazy, intangible dream only achievable for the kind of glamorous, successful people I saw on the telly. As did travelling the world.

Of course, us mardy millennials have been offered an ocean of opportunities and I am grateful to have achieved so much.

But 29 feels like an age cruelly teetering on the start of my future, whereas I see turning 30 as a new beginning – making the prospect of getting older as a woman a wonderful privilege, in contrast to the scaremongering of yesteryear.

I commiserated my dubious birthday with my friend this week as she eye-rolled about the relentless torrent of weddings, babies and engagement rings on her own Facebook.

I gave her what I modestly thought was some sage life advice: “Don’t live the life that you think you should be having if it means giving up the life that actually makes you happy.”

She raised an eyebrow and said: "I think you should be taking your own advice, love."

Maybe the last year of my twenties will be the best so far.

So happy 29th birthday to me.

And 19-year-old Laura? Please don’t "hilariously" get into a crane on your birthday night out. It was never going to end well, was it?

Love, Laura

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