{"id":4799,"date":"2019-08-01T20:54:29","date_gmt":"2019-08-01T20:54:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/girltyler.com\/staging\/2937\/?p=4799"},"modified":"2019-08-08T12:24:57","modified_gmt":"2019-08-08T12:24:57","slug":"age-30-wore-me-thinner-than-my-edges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/girltyler.com\/staging\/2937\/2019\/08\/01\/age-30-wore-me-thinner-than-my-edges\/","title":{"rendered":"Age 30 Wore Me Thinner Than My Edges"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m currently emerging from the longest depressive episode of my life. Truth be told, I’m stumbling out of this bitch.<\/p>\n

Exclusive\u00a0footage of me trying to recover\u00a0from all of the wild shit that’s been going on since I turned 30.<\/h4>\n
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Photo: Giphy<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Over the course of 10 months, I stopped updating my Insta stories, I no longer felt the need to respond to comments on Facebook, I got slack in returning phone calls\/texts, canceled hangouts with my\u00a0friends, and became an all-around unpleasant person. My mom noticed. My best\u00a0friend talked mad shit about me (to my\u00a0face). I even received several DMs\u00a0from readers asking what was going on with me. My tribe has been trying to pull me out of this\u00a0funk but I allowed myself to sink.<\/p>\n

If you look at my blog’s homepage, you’ll see the last post\u00a0was published on July 18, 2018. The truth is, I have several unpublished blog drafts from the last 10 months. GirlTyler.com is my safe space where I release my innermost thoughts and confide in you. I’ve had inconsistent periods where I would write nonstop and keep my blogs updated then fall into a state of depression where I wouldn’t long for two or three months. Never have I gone this long without updating my blog.<\/p>\n

Since my 30th birth in August, I’ve had the most transformative experiences challenging my three decades of living, nagging at my daily processes, and a call to level up.\u00a0 Since I started my blog 7 years ago, I’ve wrestled with whether I should shut it down once and for all. I don’t always feel comfortable putting my life on display and to a certain degree, I am still a very private person fighting inner battles that have plagued me since I was 4 years old. This blog gives me uncomfortable visibility that is necessary.<\/p>\n

These days, I haven’t quite had the courage to\u00a0face you or my current reality. For the sake of my own healing, I’m sitting down face-to-face with the last year of my life. Here we go.<\/p>\n

Gone Girl<\/h2>\n

Since I walked away\u00a0from my budding career as a news producer<\/a><\/strong> at age 26, I’ve been on a path of true self-discovery. I hit a\u00a0few bumps in the road, and I shared them all with you. The binge-eating<\/a><\/strong>. The fuck boys<\/a>. The heartache of losing my aunt<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0and all of the other shit in between<\/a><\/strong>. I\u00a0finally grew to a place of total\u00a0faith and I was madly in love with the woman I was becoming. Things weren’t perfect\u00a0financially or with my career but I knew better days were ahead. Even with the little that I was working with, I had so much to smile about. I was at a place of pure confidence, embracing my sexuality (please don’t send this to my mama and say “Tyler came out on her blog today,” I’m just saying I liked sex and owned that shit) and loving my skin. A huge milestone was ahead and I was beyond excited about what was in store. I didn’t care about not having the house, ideal weight, stunning wardrobe, a man, or any material possession on this Earth. Above all, I’d finally become immune to the thoughts and criticism of others.\u00a0 Tyler was enough.<\/p>\n

Everybody was ranting and raving about the beauty of being 30. All of my girlfriends\u00a0over the age of 35 marveled about their newfound autonomy and security that came after age 30. Some people run\u00a0from aging…I was ready to embrace it. My twenties were\u00a0filled with uncertainty and trauma<\/a><\/strong>, I just knew greater was on the other side.<\/p>\n

I quickly scheduled a photo shoot with my girl Tabitha<\/strong><\/a> to commemorate my 30th birthday.<\/p>\n

The category is: MOTHER JANET REALNESS.<\/h4>\n
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Photo: FX<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I’m a huge Janet\u00a0fan and enjoyed every second of this shoot.<\/p>\n


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And I loved my body.\u00a0For the\u00a0first time, I didn’t give a shit about my\u00a0FUPA, my adult acne was no longer a concern, and I embraced every inch of my\u00a0full-figure.<\/p>\n

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<\/center>And once my birthday hit, I was on a high with no signs of coming down.<\/p>\n

My sister even got me a Janet cake. Life was good.<\/h4>\n

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And then came September.<\/p>\n

Exclusive footage of me waving goodbye to the inner-peace that I had worked so hard to achieve.<\/h4>\n


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I Stopped Running My Race<\/h2>\n

The day after Labor Day, I\u00a0flew to L.A. to shoot a pilot that I’d written.\u00a0For six months, I worked remotely with a team across the country on a comedy series involving therapy and mental health in\u00a0the Black community. I’d met Sade, the show’s director and one of the creators, on Twitter in 2015. We struck up a\u00a0friendship and met the\u00a0following year during my\u00a0first trip to L.A. She and I stayed in touch\u00a0for the next two years and she contacted me in January 2018 asking if I had any comedy writing samples. I sent her a black-ish spec and she also read my blog. Here is where opportunity meets preparation. She and the team liked my writing style and wanted me to write the pilot. Over the next\u00a0few months, I wrote the entire\u00a0first season of the show. It was a true challenge indeed, but I’d\u00a0found validation in work that actually made me want to get out of bed in the morning.<\/p>\n

I spent nearly two weeks in L.A.\u00a0for the shoot and connecting with some pretty cool folks. It was a great time. In my 30 years of living, I\u00a0found a community where I felt like I could truly be myself.
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On my last day, I told Sade that I’d be coming back to live in January. I’d made up my mind that it was time to\u00a0face my\u00a0fear and move across the country to pursue my career as a TV writer.<\/p>\n

I had a plan. Go home. Stack up some money. Write my ass off. Say my goodbyes and when 2019 rolled around, I’d hop on a plane to a new life.<\/p>\n

Exclusive\u00a0footage of the\u00a0future listening to my plans.<\/h4>\n
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Photo: Tumblr<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Within 24 hours of being home, I\u00a0felt the\u00a0fire dying.\u00a0 L.A. is such an incredible city and I’d met so many new people from different cultures and backgrounds, it was extremely jarring to going back to silence. No eye contact\u00a0from anyone. Nothing. Just my small, close-knit community of fewer than 10 people. I love them all, but we all have separate routines and rarely had time to see each other. Before going to L.A., it was rare\u00a0for me to even leave my house. I only left home to go to church, the gym, or Wal-Mart. I had more excitement in 14 days than I’d had in three years. I didn’t like my reality. Instead of hanging onto the momentum that would propel me back to L.A. I slipped away. No more writing every day.<\/p>\n

Which brings me to the self-sabotaging…<\/p>\n

Enter a relationship<\/h2>\n

Two of the areas in my life where self-sabotage is most evident is in my creative projects and my love life.<\/p>\n

After many years of being single and dating on and off, last January, I told myself that it was time to get acclimated with flying solo. I said, “There’s a chance that you won’t get married and have children. You need to be okay with that.” And that was that. I gave up. No more forcing conversations with temporary men or entertaining meaningless text messages. I sat down and found laser focus. I wrote an entire television series and a movie. I put my energy into God’s calling on my life..being a TV writer.<\/p>\n

Within three days of being home, I met a man. Not just any man…a man that had been under my nose\u00a0for quite some time.<\/p>\n

He and I were at the same party 10 years ago. No one introduced us and I don’t remember ever seeing him there. More recently, I came across a Facebook photo of him that I commented on 12 years ago. I didn’t know who he was and my comment didn’t reference him, the point is, he was placed along my path long ago. All this time, we’ve been in the same space(s) and knew the same people. Over the years, we’ve had numerous opportunities to meet each other but it never happened.<\/p>\n

It’s true. You don’t have to go looking for love. It will find a way to hunt you down.<\/h4>\n
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Deborah Cox’s “Nobody’s Supposed to be Here” hits different at 30.<\/p>\n

\u2014 GirlTyler (@sheistyler) July 30, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n