So, it’s my birthday today…well not as I’m writing this but probably as you’re reading this. At first I was going to subvert expectations and write a self-deprecating piece about how I hadn’t really learnt anything and couldn’t really remember the year – in that very Gen-Z unseriously self-serious way.
But honestly, fuck - and I cannot stress this enough- that noise. I’ll tell you the truth, at first I didn’t actually want to reflect because it felt too vulnerable, too raw, like peeling back a layer I wasn’t ready to expose—not even to myself. Reflection requires honesty, and honesty means confronting the things I’d rather gloss over: the times I failed, the relationships that unravelled, the moments I doubted myself so deeply I almost didn’t recognise the person in the mirror.
I am also a deeply existential person so think I was trying to avoid the emptiness that reveals itself after reliving a memory, the almost mourning period.
However, part of my small epiphany was that the beauty of life lies in its impermanence. I realised that avoiding reflection wasn’t protecting me—it was robbing me. Robbing me of the chance to see how far I’ve come, even in the moments when I felt stuck. I was robbing me of the opportunity to honour the messiness of growth, the kind that isn’t always obvious but is quietly transformative.
So here I am, letting myself feel it all. The pride in the lessons I’ve learned, the ache of what I had to leave behind, and the hopeful uncertainty of what’s ahead. Because if this year taught me anything, it’s that reflection isn’t just about looking back—it’s about carrying those lessons forward.
And isn’t that the whole point? To keep becoming?
Sitting here, on the edge of my 23rd birthday I remember how a year ago, I stepped into this chapter of my life with a certain naivety, a quiet belief that I was inching closer to figuring it all out. Now, as I prepare to turn the page, I realise that the figuring-out part might be lifelong—and that’s okay.
This year, I’ve learned to embrace the duality of my existence: soft and strong, vulnerable yet resilient. It’s a dance, really, one I’ve stumbled through clumsily, but with determination. Womanhood, I’ve discovered, is not a singular experience but a mosaic, pieced together by every tear shed, every boundary set, every “yes” and every “no.”
Lessons in Loving Myself
22 was the year I learned to love myself differently. Not the Instagram-caption kind of self-love that looks good in a photo but feels hollow in the dark. It’s the kind of love that meant forgiving my 13, 14, 15 year old self myself for the mistakes she made, for not liking herself. It meant reckoning with the fact that I had passed up so many opportunities in prior decade because I wasn’t ‘pretty enough.’ Pretty - the only thing the world tells a young woman she should be so when I didn’t have I almost didn’t have any self-worth at all.
I had to sit with her … the ghost of that younger me—awkward, unsure, oh so desperate to fold herself into a smaller, quieter version of what she thought the world wanted—and telling her, you deserved to take up space then, just as you do now. It meant mourning the outfits I never wore, the parties I never attended, the words I swallowed because I thought my worth was conditional, tied to how pleasing I could make myself to others.
But loving myself this year wasn’t just about rewriting the past; it was about showing up for the present. It was looking in the mirror, catching the unfilled brows and hyperpigmentation and deciding that this was enough—not because of some forced mantra but because I chose to believe it. Dancing alone in my room to songs I wouldn’t admit I liked and taking pictures I never planned to post. It was the first time I laughed at my own jokes without thinking about who else might be laughing.
At 22, I realised self-love isn’t about becoming the ideal version of yourself. It’s about laying down your armour and letting yourself exist, unfiltered, unperformed. It’s about forgiving the girl who didn’t think she was enough and celebrating the woman who knows she always was.
Lessons in Friendship
I think the heartbreak is worse when u realise those friendships you were connived could never have been ‘just a season,’ definitely were. People who once felt like home can become strangers overnight, and that’s a pain no one prepares you for. This year I learnt a massive lesson about letting people go, I had gone through a serious transitional period that same year that made me very afraid of losing my old friends. It had been put into my head that I was behind them now in the game of life and would be playing the loser catching up for the rest of my life.
I basically learnt that a lot of those friends simply had outgrown me didn’t want to be mine anymore, some even bearing resentment towards me for quite a while over issues I didn’t even know they had and that hit like a gut punch. It wasn’t a clean break, the kind you can stitch up and move on from. It was messy, a slow unravelling of connections that once felt invincible.
At first, I blamed myself. Tried to retroactively fix things, to reach across the widening gap with apologies I didn’t even fully understand. I wanted so badly to preserve what we had and prove to myself that I wasn’t the problem.
But here’s the thing they don’t tell you: not every ending needs a villain. Sometimes people just stop fitting together. The edges of your lives don’t align the way they used to.
What gutted me the most though, was the quiet resentment. Discovering that people you loved, trusted, laughed with until your ribs ached, had been harboring grievances you never got the chance to address. It made me feel like I’d been living in two realities: theirs, where I was the antagonist, and mine, where I thought we were okay. It was a cruel dissonance (honestly fuck ‘non-confrontational people).
But here’s the twist I wasn’t expecting : letting go felt lighter than I thought it would. When I stopped grasping so tightly at what we used to be, I saw that I wasn’t behind anyone. There’s no game, no race, no imaginary scoreboard tracking who’s "ahead." The only person I need to keep pace with is myself.
I did mourn those friendships, properly. I let myself cry, rage, replay every memory like a favourite song I couldn’t stop listening to. And then, slowly, I stopped pressing play.
And in that acceptance, I found space for new connections. The kind that feel like the first inhale after a storm. I formed them on foundations where I wasn’t performing, I wasn’t shrinking, I wasn’t apologising for being me. The kind of friendships that meet you where you are. And that’s worth every goodbye.
Lessons in Dreams
22 was the year I realised I had spent all my prior life trying to measure up to arbitrary timelines: milestones I’d never agreed to but somehow felt chained to. Go to uni here and do this degree and finish by this time so you can get a serious boyfriend by this age so you can be married by this time and have kids by that time. It was a dizzying game of comparison, as though the worth of my life could be tallied by how neatly I ticked off boxes. The pressure was suffocating, and I often felt like I was falling behind, perpetually stuck on the sidelines while everyone else sprinted ahead.
But then, something shifted.
I stopped chasing someone else’s version of a fulfilled life and started listening to the quiet whispers of my own desires—the ones I’d been too scared to admit, even to my own diary. I allowed myself to dream differently this year, to build a vision of a future that didn’t feel like a performance and feel comfortable with that fact that the journey there may look different and change in ways I will not be able to predict. I’ve started to take risks that scared me—not because I thought I’d succeed but because I trusted that even in failure, there would be growth.
At 22, I learned to bet on myself. To step into the uncertainty with trembling hands but a steady heart. And what I found there wasn’t some grand revelation or a neatly packaged success story. It was something quieter, more profound: the freedom to dream on my terms.
Lessons in Perfectionism
For so long, I mistook perfectionism for ambition. I thought if I could just get everything right—say the right words, make the right choices, execute every plan flawlessly—then I’d be safe. Safe from judgment, safe from failure, safe from the gnawing feeling that I wasn’t enough.
But perfectionism is a liar. It doesn’t protect you, it even does the opposite. It tells you not to start unless you can guarantee success, not to try unless you can ensure applause. And for years, I listened to it. I lived with my ideas half-formed, my dreams not dreamed at all because the thought of failing was more terrifying than the regret of never trying.
I was too afraid to be seen trying and coming up short. Perfectionism had convinced me that the worth of my ventures was tied to my outcomes, that effort only mattered if it yielded result.
But life doesn’t wait for you to feel ready. The messy, imperfect attempts are the point. And when I finally let go of the need to be flawless, I found something unexpected: freedom. Freedom to create for the sake of creating, to stumble and learn, to risk embarrassment and find joy in the process.
The only things you fail to do are the things you didn’t try at all.
So, as I stand on the threshold of 23, I feel a quiet gratitude. Gratitude for the lessons, the growth, the moments that brought me to my knees, and the ones that lifted me higher than I thought possible.
I don’t know what this next year holds, and maybe that’s the beauty of it. I do however know that I will stepping into it a little braver, a little wiser, and a lot more myself.
- A 22 year old on the edge of becoming.