Finally 30

December 7, I turned 30. Therefore, I thought it would be cute to share the letter I wrote to myself, so all of you get to know me better.

Here it is, you're 30 at last.

What a ride! Do you remember when you believed that 30 was old? The closer you were getting to 30, the more you realised that 30 is still very young. 30 is just the beginning of your life, right? You have been told many times by many friends that your 30s are your twenties with financial independence, and freedom, oh whatever freedom is. Apparently, in your 30s, you get a bit more settled with yourself. With who you are, with what you like? And even though you don't have everything figured out, that is OK, mum has told us that life will never be all figured out and that is the beauty of it, because it leaves space for new and better growth.

Collage by me

Dear 30-year-old me,

In French, your 20s translates to "vingtaine" and every time your friends and yourself would go through shitty times during our 20s, you would joke that after all if you pay close attention to it, there is the word "vin" (wine) and "(h)aine" (hatred)… your twenties can only be a disaster, lol.

What a jokester you can be! Also, do you know you are quite lucky? Not only, have you got very supportive parents, but you got to do the things that you wanted to do. That is Sagittarius woman for you: the moment you have an idea in mind, you go for it, which is actually great! For instance, since you were 14 you wanted to be a journalist and guess what? You acquired a master’s in journalism. You got a little bit too disillusioned by mainstream journalism, though… but you have your paper attesting of your qualification.

At 19, you started getting a serious interest into social justice. Let's say feminism. I would even say white liberal feminism. Yet, you had to hit 24 to understand that feminism was not a monolith. That there are many feminisms, and you need to find the one(s) you fit in. Mainstream feminism is a very bourgeois way to conceive gender, race and the inner workings of society. It does not challenge the status quo, it strives to maintain it with more diversified faces holding up the whip. You understood that even liberal feminism is not quite fitting for you either because material conditions are not even accounted for.

You grew out of your liberal views. There is this saying that goes: "you grow more conservative, as you get older". Well, if you lack empathy, you do. But luckily, you managed to comprehend that liberalism is the same as conservatism which both are linked to capitalism and capitalism is the very thing you grew to loathe the most in this world.

The older you got, the more curious you became. Thank God, you are curious. You got lucky because you grew up in a family that very much encouraged you to critically think, to make your own opinions and to research. That is likely why you got into sociology, communication, then journalism. Words are very important to you. You are great at understanding that the words you use, shape the way people view the world. You have always said that you’ve got a love and hate relationship with the media, and it's still true today. This is actually why you got very much disillusioned with journalism. When you realised that free press was not actually free. But very controlled, very manufactured.

You are 30 now and about two years ago, the colonial state of Israel launched a genocidal attack against the Palestinians and the neighbouring countries. You have always known, what was happening in occupied Palestine was colonization. Your family has gone through similar events. Your motherland has been pillaged and stolen to fall into the hands of western interests. Why would they come in to destabilize your country? Why would they subjugate other people?

You love people. Even the ones you don't know. Because you love life, and you believe that everyone, regarding of their race, gender, religion, and wherever they live in the world deserve to live with decency and respect. See, you think that if you deserve such treatment, everyone else does too. And that is just the basis of empathy and your humanity. And I'm really grateful for the person you have become.

There is something that you strongly believe in and it is the act of love. You love life, you love humanity, and you believe that we will achieve great peace through a Revolution. You believe that Revolution is an act of love, and you write about it a lot because you know that Revolution is something that needs to happen in order for our material conditions to be met. For our material conditions to be fulfilled. You have read so much on Marxism, on class struggles, on colonialism, and resistance. You even have a Substack now. Oh, and a YouTube channel.

Screenshot of some of my videos I uploaded

You have always loved fashion. Like every other thing in your life, fashion is also viewed through a critical lens. Remember, you always tell yourself that everything is political, even though our society tries to make it as if only certain things are. You see fashion as an art form. Yet, the more you started to understand how capitalism worked and how fashion is implicated in that capitalism, the more disgusted you felt. You even switched from fast fashion to second hand, then you found similar issues in the second hand industry, so you forced yourself to really assess the situation and think in a more conscious way. It involved understanding what is materially possible to do in a broken system that will turn every sustainable alternative into a commodity and bring us back to square one.

I think this is the way that allowed you to really understand how things are interconnected with each other? The moment you figured where the problem laid, and started connecting the dots more clearly, you grew a better understanding and relationship with fashion.

During your disillusionment and despair about your passion for fashion, you started frantically looking for people talking about it in a very critical way and hopefully giving you some insights on how to keep loving fashion despite its dark behind-the-scenes. I mean it when I say you were frantic looking people up! The fail was so miserable, you wondered why not start one. Because if you were looking, someone else might also be, right? So you started a YouTube channel to talk about fashion but in a very critical, very Marxist way.

You have made good friends and beautiful connexions. People who love you for who you are. I'm actually so happy that those people are still around today. Those very friends that travelled to come celebrate you. 30 is such a beautiful age, I am already loving it. Being all empathic, loving and caring. I'm actually glad I got to see you morph into the woman that you are today as well as grow a political consciousness that has made you, again, a more empathic person.

I cannot wait for these 30s. See what is in store for you. As you type these words, you are currently witnessing the fall of the Western Empire. The fall is going to be violent. You dream about the Revolution, so you know it's going to be ruthless. I just want you to take in that time, to find your community and to organise. I just wish for you to live past the Western Empire in your lifetime because the cracks are open and can’t be sealed back up. It is happening, it is really happening.

Thank you for being here, thank you for loving yourself.

Love always

Ruth Noemi