I didn’t walk into 30 with a champagne toast and a perfectly curated sense of arrival.
There was no dramatic “this is my era” moment. No clean break between who I was and who I’m becoming. What I did walk into was awareness, which is very nerve wracking, but liberating and exciting. If I’m being honest, turning 30 didn’t feel like a celebration, but it felt like a recalibration. For most of my 20s, I was in survival mode and I don’t mean that in a dramatic way.
I mean it in the way a lot of Black queer men understand instinctively. You learn how to read rooms quickly and how to be likable, adaptable, valuable. You learn how to move in spaces that weren’t necessarily built for you and you do it well enough that people don’t even realize how much effort it takes. Survival mode can look like success as you’re being booked, busy, visible, and desired.
Underneath all of that, it’s still survival. It’s choosing what version of yourself is safest at the moment. It’s overextending to prove your worth. It’s accepting situations, from romantic, professional, even platonic, that don’t fully meet you, because at least they see you. Somewhere along the way, I got good at that.
I really want to say too good. Turning 30 forced me to ask a question I had been avoiding: What does my life look like when I’m no longer just trying to survive it? Survival and intention are not the same thing. Intention requires something that survival mode doesn’t always allow, which is honesty. Not the curated kind and not the kind that sounds good in conversations or reads well online.
I’m talking about the kind of honesty you have with yourself when nobody’s watching. The kind that asks ‘are you actually happy’ or ‘are you just comfortable?’ For me, comfort has been one of the hardest things to interrogate. Comfort can feel like peace, but it’s not always the same thing. Sometimes it’s just familiarity and sometimes it’s attachment to what you already know, even if it’s not aligned with who you’re becoming.I had to sit with that and the way I stayed in spaces, from relationships, dynamics, patterns, because they were easy because they required less from me.
They didn’t challenge me to grow in ways that felt unfamiliar. I had to be honest about the role I played in that because growth isn’t just about what you’ve been through, but it’s about what you continue to allow. There’s a pressure that comes with turning 30, especially as a Black gay man, to feel like you should have everything figured out by now from career, love, identity, purpose, and stability.
You’re supposed to arrive at some fully realized version of yourself and just…be. The truth is, I don’t have it all figured out. I’m learning that I don’t need to. What I do have now is clarity in what I’m no longer willing to perform because that’s another thing turning 30 revealed to me.
There’s a difference between healing and performance healing. Performance healing is aesthetic. It’s a language where people are saying the right things, posting the right quotes, and presenting themselves as someone who is “doing the work.” But actual healing is super uncomfortable, private battles, and requires you to confront parts of yourself that don’t align with the image you’ve created.
It requires you to admit that you’ve outgrown certain people and also that certain people have outgrown you. It requires you to release versions of yourself that once protected you, but no longer serve you and that doesn’t always look pretty. For me, healing has looked like reevaluating intimacy in every form.
Romantic intimacy, yes, but also platonic, and most importantly, the relationship I have with myself. I had to ask myself, ‘what does it mean for me to actually feel safe?’ Not just desired or chosen, but safe. Safe to be soft and not always have the answers. Safe to not perform strength all the time because as Black men, especially Black queer men, softness is often treated like a liability as if it’s something you have to earn, or something that can be taken advantage of if you’re not careful.
So we harden sometimes and we lead with independence. We become self-sufficient to the point where needing someone feels foreign. So while there’s strength in that, there’s also isolation. I don’t want to be isolated anymore. I don’t want to feel like I always have to be the strongest person in the room. I don’t want to carry everything on my own just because I’ve proven that I can. I want to experience softness without questioning it. I want to receive care without analyzing it and I want intimacy that feels grounding, not confusing.
That starts with how I treat myself. It starts with giving myself permission to slow down and to not have everything mapped out. To not force clarity where it hasn’t arrived yet. It starts with trusting that uncertainty is not failure, but it’s transition instead. That’s something I’m still learning.
If I’m being real, there’s still a part of me that wants control and wants to know exactly where things are going, how they’ll unfold, and what the outcome will be. But life doesn’t work like that and neither does growth. Turning 30 didn’t give me answers, but it gave me better questions.
Questions about what I value and about how I love. Also, how I show up and not just for other people, but for myself. Questions that force me to be more intentional with my time, my energy, and my accessibility. That’s another lesson I’ve had to learn, which is that everyone doesn’t deserve access to you.
They don’t deserve your time, vulnerability, or your softness. People may get it misconstrued, but that’s not about being closed off, it’s about being discerning. It’s about understanding that access is a privilege, not a default. I’m learning how to honor that without guilt and learning how to choose myself without overexplaining it. I’m learning how to move with intention, even when it feels unfamiliar. For the first time in a long time, I’m not just asking what looks good from the outside, but I’m asking what feels right on the inside.
When you have that kind of shift, it changes everything. Turning 30 hasn’t made me perfect, nor has it made me fully healed. It hasn’t made me certain, either. But, it has made me aware. Aware of what I deserve. Aware of what I’m no longer willing to carry. Aware of the kind of life I actually want to build, and not just survive.
Maybe that’s what this decade is really about. Maybe I’m supposed to push to become…become the better version of Ty and do it with a level of honesty, softness, and intention that I’ve never allowed myself to fully step into before. For so long, I was focused on making it through.
Now, I’m focused on living.
