“I’ve started to really understand the phrase ‘the passage of time,’” Helen told me in the wake of her thirtieth. “It’s like this long corridor I’m walking down, and the farther I go, the more doors slam that I can’t access.” After Helen painted this metaphor for me, I saw doors slamming everywhere. Young writers’ programs I was no longer eligible for. Clothes and clubs I decided were no longer appropriate for me. I read a leaflet on menstrual cups in a waiting room and noticed they had two size options for the under thirties, and just the one larger size option for thirty-year-old women and
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