This weekend, I turned 30.
It’s an age I feel that I have been waiting for my whole life; my outsides finally catching up with what had always felt like my always much older insides. The day before my birthday, I participated in a Black Lives Matter protest at my alma mater, marching through the streets of my former home alongside my sister, our friend, and a thousand strangers. At one point, my sister looked at me and asked, “Are you happy this is how you are spending the last day of your 20s?” That thought had not quite hit me. On this the last day of a pivotal decade, I was standing on the grounds that helped raise me, participating in what is now the broadest civil rights protest in modern U.S. history, continuing the fight my ancestors started long before me. All at once, I was overwhelmed. “Happy” seemed too small a word.
For the first time, I looked around and saw so…
