Disclaimer: Not mine. Not pretending they're mine.

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It happens on what is supposed to be your thirtieth birthday.

Thirty, twenty, who's counting anymore anyway?

You look in the mirror and suddenly you don't recognize the person staring back at you. You look around your world, and you don't recognize any of it, and you wonder if you're going crazy because it all looks so... so wrong.

You never thought you wouldn't recognize your home, but it's been happening a little every day lately. It's all so dark, so dreary and the lights are red and low and sometimes you even have a hard time seeing. But you know it's your perception and not the place itself, because after all - this IS a different place than what you had become used to. Lately you've been wanting to escape.

And since your birthday is so close to Christmas, you and your friends have a shore pass. They've thrown you a party. And you don't know why, because you've been a total asshole to all of them for the past few months. But still, they're all there and you try not to mope around miserably.

It's times like these you remember how much you've missed in the past ten years. Thirty. Jesus. You'd never even considered being thirty years old. When you'd disappeared, your main concern was making it to twenty-one. And after that, maybe you'd worry about thirty.

But you stopped at eighteen, skipped right over twenty-one, landed at twenty-eight, and now you're staring thirty in the face. And no one believes you, because you still have your beautiful baby face. It's not a mid-life crisis because, as horribly old as thirty seems to you, it's not old enough to be considered mid-life.

So maybe you really are going crazy.

Tossed down the rabbit hole of this brave new world, and you want to understand why you long for things to return to normal while at the same time long for your friends to let you grow up. Lucas Wolenczak, boy genius, has made way for Ensign Wolenczak, soldier, and you can't make up your mind as to whether or not it's a good change.

Logic tells you it isn't. Not really.

But logic has been quashed as of late. You like the uniform. Kind of. Mostly you like the sense of... God, it sounds so cliche. The sense of belonging. You're part of something bigger now, as opposed to just floating in the wind like you were before. Because even though you were part of the crew, as a civilian, you didn't have a place. Not a real, true, honest-to-God place.

Like you do now.

You hear people buzzing around you, and you struggle to keep up with the conversation. Someone jokes about your age, and you laugh along with everyone else. Because, when you think about it - like you are now - it is funny. You're a grown-up without ever having to actually grow up.

Funny-sad.

You want to tell everyone to fuck off and leave you alone, but they did go out of their ways to make this special for you. You kind of owe them some kind of civility. You wonder what you did to deserve such great friends. Certainly it wasn't anything you actually did. And they couldn't all pity you, could they? After all, if they were friends out of pity, they would have dropped you the minute you started up with the bullshit you pull when people are getting too close.

Jesus, you're a walking cliche tonight. Is this what happens when people hit thirty? They just start spouting cliches? You certainly hope not.

You certainly hope your life hasn't been boiled down to a few formulaic lines about relationships and belonging. There's so much more, isn't there? Shouldn't there be?

On your thirtieth birthday, you're not sure there is.