The Air at Thirty

At fifteen I set thirty as my end. Now I have turned thirty twice. Through self-portraits, a notebook from a psychiatric ward and the records of ordinary days, I look at a life I never imagined living.

At fifteen, in middle school, I drew my future self: a smiling scientist in a lab coat beside a boiling beaker. In that future I was successful and became the youngest professor at twenty-eight or twenty-nine. It never went past thirty, because at half that age I had already set it as my end. At home I was pushed and punished for almost everything, especially my grades, so often that I stopped asking why. I was exhausted. But instead of giving up, I decided to achieve every success they projected onto me and then leave at the very peak for my own relief.

In 2019, at college in the U.S., I was at the opposite end of what I had wanted: the bottom. A loser who could not even leave in glory. Every academic success I had built was collapsing, and I was the one wrecking it. I could not bear myself anymore, so I decided to die before thirty. At night I recorded farewell messages, and I prepared a perfect plan to end my life quietly without a single mistake. But after ten minutes of kind talk with an academic dean, I broke down crying and confessed everything. The school sent me straight to a psychiatric emergency room, my hands and feet tied so I could not hurt myself. Someone checked my breathing every fifteen minutes and followed me to the bathroom. I was allowed one blunt pen and one notebook. I was already mad, and I filled it even more madly, just to breathe. I could not erase, so I struck through. I drew scenes and wrote screams: "All your words are lies. Lies, lies. Hypocrisy! You praisers of life feel like nothing but violence." But on the back pages I hoped for a strangely specific future: the Camino, a light hiking pack, a sandwich shared with a stranger, a longing to photograph, write and build things from my experience and share them. Seven years later, in 2026, I copied the notebook out line by line in English. That same autumn I went to an emergency room again for the first time since. This time no one sent me and nothing held me down. I walked in myself, because I was ill and wanted to stay alive.

In fact, I turned thirty twice: by Korean age in 2025, and on my birthday in 2026. Strangely the air at thirty had no special scent or taste. What had I been so afraid of? Still, not every day is fine. I laugh out loud, then pinch my arm under the desk. When I am anxious, I pick my lips until they bleed. One day I came across a playground and hesitated for a long time, then finally rode a swing. It was fun.

I did not reach the bright, shining future I had dreamed of. Not the professor, nor the Nobel nominee. I have an ordinary office job, five days a week, nine to six. The only interesting part is that I work four days from home and one day at the office, which is nice, since I still have quite a bit of anxiety and social awkwardness. Every morning I take five pills for ADHD and bipolar disorder. In my wardrobe there are three of the same T-shirt, my favorite. Across the chest it says: "Not hard at all. I'm the one who jumped into the wild jungle, so I'm okay." Every two weeks I see my psychiatrist. On a calendar of the past year, blue marks the appointments and red marks the days depression kept me from moving. I pushed those appointments back, and still went. On days I still feel lost, I smoke. And every day I love my sick cat. At my parents' house, my father was watering pots labelled with each family member's name. Since my marriage, my pot also bears my husband's name. Someone was watering, every day, the name of a person who never wanted to live past thirty.

In the 2019 ward notebook there is a thorn spiral: smooth outside, dense with thorns turned inward, stabbing me until I bled inside. After my thirtieth birthday I built it for real from trifoliate-orange branches and wire, pricked again and again. A single lily rises from the spiral, and the thorns remain.

I still sometimes think about death. Not because I cannot bear my life anymore, only because dying today would not be so bad. And every morning I brew my favorite coffee and brush my teeth beside my husband, laughing. This is not a story of recovery. Some days thirty is tender, some days awkward, some days nothing at all. I place these days side by side, without letting one correct another.