I turned 22 this weekend and it felt… steady. No fireworks, no crisis, no familiar clench where I compare my life to someone’s on Instagram and decide I’m failing. Just a steady hum under the skin.

For the first time on a birthday, I wasn’t bracing. I wasn’t doing the dramatic mental audit of every mistake from the last year and calling it ‘reflection’. I woke up and thought, I’m ready. Not in a cinematic way. In a real way. As if the year knocked and I actually opened the door instead of hiding behind it pretending I wasn’t in.

Looking back at 21, I feel properly grateful. Not forced, not cute, not “everything happens for a reason” like a cheesy quote. More like: life kept nudging me with the same lesson wearing different outfits, and I finally stopped pretending I didn’t recognise it.

I used to treat growth like a vibe. Buy the notebook, write the three intentions, post a tidy little reset and wait for my personality to update overnight. That’s not how it went. Growth ended up being the decisions I made when nobody saw me make them. The way I behaved when I was knackered and still had things to do. The tiny edits to my day that no one claps for because they’re not glamorous, but they quietly change everything anyway.

It was realising that if I don’t learn the lesson, it repeats, and I no longer have the energy for reruns.

I know my boundaries now. I say that calmly. Not as a threat, not as a performance, not as a laminated list I wave around while secretly breaking all of them. I mean the kind of boundaries you keep without a speech.

A message pops up and the old me starts drafting a paragraph of over-explaining, the newer me simply says “not today, thanks”, and cracks on with her day. No fanfare. Nothing explodes. The world keeps turning. It turns out a lot of my stress was me trying to outrun twenty minutes of someone else potentially being slightly annoyed. Once I learned to stomach that discomfort I got my time back, my peace back, and a sense of humour about the whole thing. Because honestly? The drama was mostly in my head. In real life, people adjust. And if they don’t, that’s what I call useful information.

Friendship got clearer too. 21 asked me to edit, not to be cold but to be honest. I used to be loyal to history. Now I’m loyal to health. There’s a difference. I started paying attention to how I felt around people instead of the stories I could tell about us. Do I feel expansive or small? Do I breathe properly or brace? Do I leave conversations with more of myself or less? Some connections fit like a jumper you’ve had for years: soft, reliable, makes you feel like yourself. Some are like shoes that look great but pinch your toes within ten minutes. You can walk in them, technically. But why would you call that walking when you could call it pain and stop?

I don’t need a crowd. I need the handful who can clock from a single “lol” whether I’m fine or spiralling. The ones I can be specific with. The ones who laugh with me when I get dramatic, then help me de-dramatise. I’m not auditioning for ‘low-maintenance friend who can handle anything’. I’m choosing ‘honest friend who says the thing, keeps the plan, and goes home on time’.

Work, uni, life – my personal triangle of chaos – stopped feeling like a chase when I started treating time like something I run, not something I apologise to. I haven’t become a schedule robot. I’ve become someone who lives in her calendar on purpose. Theme days. Sensible buffers. If it matters to me, it’s on there. Admin has its lane, study has its day, creative work has actual room, and the in-between hours aren’t a dumping ground for every random “could you just..” that floats past. I do an admin sweep so it doesn’t feel like everything is all over the place, I protect the blocks that protect me, and if anything shifts I move things around instead of panicking and binning the whole week. It’s not glamourous. It’s also not chaos. Planning is just boundaries with timestamps, and it turned noise into pace. I like pace.

Anxiety still lives in the building; it just doesn’t have keys to my room. I used to ignore the early signs and then act shocked when I woke up inside a Category 5 spiral. Now I clock the whispers before they become sirens. Tight chest, shallow breathing, thoughts running disaster drills like there’s an exam I didn’t revise for – that’s my cue to intervene kindly, not dramatically. I don’t bully myself for being human. I do the simple things that actually help me: a pause where I do nothing clever, have a few minutes off of my socials, watch a silly video that makes me laugh at a volume that scares the person next to me on the bus. I tell someone I trust with my feelings before it turns into a secret because shame loves silence, and I’m not feeding it. None of this is aesthetic. It’s not a montage with dramatic background music. It’s me catching the wobble earlier and choosing a gentler next minute. The point isn’t to never wobble. It’s to wobble less, and recover faster.

My body and I have called a truce. I got bored of being mean to it like it was a hobby. It’s exhausting and, frankly, unimaginative. This body has carried me through deadlines, crowded trains, awkward events, and long, silly nights where I laughed so hard I had to sit down. I’m not putting conditions on my own kindness anymore. I move because it makes my head quieter. I eat like I want to see myself do well. I also allow myself to eat bad without punishment every time. I don’t need to adore every angle to treat myself well. Neutral is allowed. Respect is better. Changing room lighting remains evidence of a crime, but it’s not running my day.

Gratitude turned specific. I stopped naming the same three things like I was submitting a form and started naming the tiny, exact things that light a day from the inside. The bus that turns up when the app says it will. A seat on the train when I was sure I’d have to stand. Sun through a gap in a heavy cloud that makes the street look temporarily blessed. A coat pocked with money I forgot I had. Music that makes the pavement feel like an opening scene. This isn’t delusion. It’s accurate noticing. There’s so much good I used to step over while hunting for the next problem. And the more I notice, the braver I get. When your hands are already full of good, it’s easier to drop scraps. I’m not negotiating with crumbs anymore.

There were little moments in 21 that felt like they bent the track a few degrees. Not massive, not loud. Just ordinary scenes that changed the angle. Clearing out my wardrobe and realising I was keeping clothes for a version of me who doesn’t live here anymore; letting her go without a lecture. Sitting on the edge of my bed before a plan I didn’t want to attend and admitting it out loud, then cancelling kindly instead of showing up resentful and calling it loyalty. Sending a message to ask for help and watching absolutely nothing break – the opposite, actually. The load split and I remembered what community is for. Waking up and feeling the reflex to scroll to numb the morning, choosing five minutes of looking at the wall instead – not because walls are inspiring, but because I needed to prove to myself that I could choose something boring and kind over something loud and draining. It’s embarrassing how much that helped.

The biggest shift though? I stopped outsourcing my self-worth. I used to demand a verdict from anything that moved: grades, social media, friends, managers, mirrors, numbers on an app, unread messages, a to-do list I created myself and then used to punish myself for not completing like I wasn’t the one who set the pace. They can all offer feedback. None of them are the author. I’m the person who has to live with me full time, so if I’m not on my own side, I’m in trouble. The day I noticed how often I negotiated against myself – traded away the plan I made because someone else’s urgency shouted louder than my own priorities – I felt physically ill. I wanted to lie down on my bedroom floor and just cry. Never again. You can be soft and still have a spine. You can be generous without giving away your week. Those aren’t opposites. That’s the point: kindness with edges.

I also stopped cursing my potential just for a laugh. I try not to call myself ‘a mess’ anymore just to be relatable. It’s not cute to hex your life for engagement. If I keep saying I’m chaotic, I’ll keep acting like chaos is a personality trait. I’d rather be accurate. I’m someone learning consistency. I keep small promises to myself. I’m often tired, occasionally silly, regularly dramatic, and still I show up. That’s the sentence I want under my year; I show up. Quiet, heavy-duty, reliable. You can build things on that.

I’m aiming to run my week on purpose: proper theme days, sensible buffers, a weekly loose-ends block, and checking the diary before I say yes. I’m aiming for boundaries without the TED Talk – “no” as a sentence, “yes” with my whole chest. I’m aiming to curate friendships that feel like open windows – fewer debriefs, more honesty and to leave politely when it’s time. I’m aiming to choose small acts of courage over big speeches: start before I feel ready, ask for help sooner, say the awkward thing kindly. I’m aiming to catch anxiety early and intervene gently instead of waiting for the sirens. I’m aiming to keep my self-talk accurate not cruel; consistency over spectacle, depth over display. I’m aiming to get better at endings, back my decisions, and keep promises to myself first so the rest of my life gets the best of me, not the leftovers.

Part of that is what I give my eyes to all day. In my 22nd year I’m aiming to treat my attention as my best currency and actually spend it like it’s mine. To visit my phone instead of living on it. To know where not to look and avoid the corners of social media that are basically booby-trapped with comparison and chaos, the same way you’d avoid a dodgy shortcut in the rain. I’m aiming to unfollow the accounts that make me want to rebrand my entire personality by lunchtime and mute the kind of ‘motivation’ that’s really just a lecture in cute fonts. I know I’ll still have the odd raccoon-at-midnight scroll because I’m human, not a monk, but the aim is to stop handing my mood to an algorithm that doesn’t love me back. I want my feed to feel like a flat I pay rent for – tidy, funny, a bit odd in a good way, and never selling me a worse version of myself.

Weirdly, when I spend my attention better, noticing the good gets easier. Gratitude doesn’t feel like a performance, it feels like accurate noticing. And that’s exactly the kind of rhythm I’m aiming for this year: less noise, more presence.

So here’s my quiet birthday toast, just to this version of me and this exact moment. Thank you, 21, for the lessons you had to repeat because I ignored the gentle version. I got it in the end. And 22 – I’m not scared of you and I’m not worshiping you either. I’m walking in with my eyes open and my hands free. I’ve dropped what needed dropping. I’m carrying what actually matters. I will almost definitely cry on a random Wednesday and then laugh at something stupid five minutes later. I will mess up, apologise without disintegrating, and fix it. I will plan my weeks, keep my promises, and avoid the parts of the internet that try to sell me insecurity as self-improvement. I will listen the first time. If I miss it, I’ll listen the second. I don’t need perfect. I need honest. I don’t need a brand new me. I need this me, consistently.

Becoming myself didn’t look like a curtain drop or a grand reveal. It was quieter than that. It was me noticing the pattern and choosing differently. Me checking the calendar and honouring what I put there. Me saying “not tonight” without guilt and “yes” without fear. Me finding good in ridiculous places – a seat on a packed train, a song at the right moment, the exact right joke to bring me back to earth. It’s not a montage. It’s a practice. And it’s already working. 22 doesn’t feel like a stranger. It feels like somewhere I can see myself settling into.

— Lilly x