Things I Wish I Knew In My 20's

It was one of those late nights where the house was finally quiet and my brain absolutely refused to cooperate with sleep. I was lying there in the dark just thinking the way you do when there is nothing left to distract you and I kept coming back to the same thought.

I am 23 now. Just barely. And 22 feels close enough to touch but far enough away that I can see it clearly for the first time. And what I see, looking back at it, is a girl who was trying so hard and had so little of the right information. Not the textbook kind. Not the kind you Google. The quiet, honest, nobody-says-this-out-loud kind.

The kind that would have changed things.

I spent a lot of 22 confused about things I did not have to be confused about. Carrying weight I could have put down sooner. Waiting for things that were never going to arrive in the form I expected. Comparing myself to people who were fighting their own silent battles behind everything that looked effortless.

And I kept thinking why does nobody just say these things out loud? Why does everyone wait until they are older and wiser and far enough away from it before they talk about what it actually felt like to be in it?

I am not far away from it. I am one year out. And maybe that is exactly why I can write this because the details are still sharp, the feelings still close enough to be honest about, and I am just far enough to see what I could not see then.

This is everything I wish someone had sat down and told me at 22.

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1. Nobody Actually Knows What They Are Doing

I spent so much of 22 feeling like I was the only one who did not have a plan. Like everyone around me had quietly received a manual for their life that I somehow missed. They looked so certain. So put together. So like they knew where they were going and why.

They did not.

I know this now because I got close enough to enough people to see behind the certainty. And what I found every single time was someone who was figuring it out as they went, just like me, just slightly better at performing confidence in public.

The most put-together people you know are improvising. The ones who look like they have a five-year plan are adjusting it constantly. The girl whose life looks sorted on Instagram is lying in bed at night asking the same questions you are.

You are not behind. You are not broken. You are not the only one who does not know. You are just honest about it, which is actually more than most people manage.

2. Your Circle Getting Smaller Is Not Something To Grieve

At 22 I was still holding on to friendships that had quietly expired. Showing up for people who had long stopped showing up for me. Feeling guilty about the distance that had grown between me and people I used to be close to, as if that distance was my fault or my failure.

It was not. It was just time doing what time does.

People grow in different directions. It is one of the most normal things that happens in your twenties and one of the least talked about because it feels like loss even when it is actually just change. The friendships that fade are not proof that something went wrong. They are proof that you and someone else are becoming different people and that is not a tragedy, it is just life.

What I know now is that a small circle of people who genuinely see you, show up for you, and want good things for you is worth more than a wide network of people you perform for. Quality over quantity is something everyone says and almost nobody believes until they have lived the alternative long enough to feel how hollow it is.

Let the circle get smaller. Tend to what remains. It will be more than enough.

3. Comparison Is The Quietest Way To Waste Your Twenties

I do not think I understood how much of my mental energy was going toward comparison until I started to pull it back and felt how much space opened up.

It was not dramatic comparison not the obvious kind where you look at someone and feel openly jealous. It was quieter than that. A girl my age doing something I had not done yet and a small internal calculation happening automatically. A peer reaching a milestone I had not reached and something in me quietly adjusting its sense of whether I was on track.

The problem with comparison is not just that it makes you feel bad. It is that it makes you use someone else's life as the measuring stick for yours and those two lives have nothing to do with each other. Different starting points, different circumstances, different definitions of what they are even trying to build.

You are not behind her. You are not ahead of her. You are on a completely different road going to a completely different place. The sooner you stop looking sideways and start looking forward, the faster your own road starts to make sense.

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4. You Do Not Owe Anyone The Performance

At 22 I was very good at performing the version of myself that different situations seemed to require. The capable one. The cheerful one. The one who had it together. The one who was fine, always fine, never too much and never too little.

It was exhausting in a way I could not name at the time because I did not realize I was doing it. I just thought some people were easier to be around than others and that was that.

What I understand now is that the people who felt easy were the people I did not perform for. The people who already knew the unedited version of me and liked it anyway. And that the performance I was putting on for everyone else was not protecting me it was just keeping me from being actually known.

The version of you that people remember is not always the real you. And that is okay not everyone deserves the real version. But make sure that somewhere, with someone, the real version gets to exist without apology. You cannot sustain a performance forever. And you should not have to.

5. Healing Is Not Linear And Unbothered Is Not Always Healthy

We grew up in the era of unbothered. Of not letting things affect you. Of moving on quickly and cleanly and without visible damage as proof that you were strong, that you were okay, that you were the kind of person things did not stick to.

I bought into this for a long time. I was very good at moving on. Or what looked like moving on.

What I was actually doing was suppressing. Packing things down quickly and neatly and covering them with productivity and plans and being busy enough not to have to sit with anything uncomfortable. And it worked until it did not. Until something small cracked things open and all the things I had been efficiently moving on from were right there, completely unprocessed, waiting.

Some things need to be felt. Properly, fully, inconveniently felt before they can actually leave. Healing is not a straight line from hurt to fine. It loops back. It takes longer than it should. It arrives at unexpected moments in unexpected ways. And that is not weakness. That is just what being human actually looks like when you stop performing otherwise.

6. Your Time Is The Most Expensive Thing You Own

Nobody told me this clearly enough at 22 and I spent a significant amount of that year handing my time to things and people that gave nothing back.

Time is the one resource you cannot earn more of, save up, or borrow. Every hour you give to something is an hour that is permanently gone. And at 22 I was spending mine like I had unlimited supplies on obligations I had not chosen, on people who would not notice if I disappeared, on things that kept me busy without moving me anywhere.

Protect your time like it is precious because it is. Be selective about what gets it. Not in a cold or selfish way in an honest way. Ask yourself regularly whether the things filling your hours are actually worth the hours they are taking. You will be surprised how often the answer is no, and how much that answer changes once you start acting on it.

The people and things that are worth your time will not drain you dry trying to get it. That alone tells you everything you need to know.

7. Soft Is Not Weak

I spent years confusing softness with vulnerability and vulnerability with weakness. I thought being emotionally open, gentle, and sensitive was something to manage rather than something to value. Something that needed to be balanced out by toughness so nobody could use it against you.

I was wrong.

The softest people I know are some of the strongest. Not despite their softness because of it. It takes real courage to stay kind in a world that is frequently unkind. It takes genuine strength to remain open when closing down would be so much easier. It takes bravery to keep feeling things fully when going numb is always an option.

Your sensitivity is not your weakness. Your gentleness is not something that needs to be hardened. The world does not need more people who have successfully switched off the parts of themselves that feel it needs more people who feel everything and show up anyway.

Stay soft. Protect it. It is one of the best things about you.

8. You Will Outgrow People You Love And That Is Okay

This is the one that nobody prepares you for because it does not fit neatly into any category. It is not a falling out. It is not a betrayal. It is not anyone's fault. It is just two people growing in directions that no longer overlap, and the quiet grief of realising that the friendship you had was real and good and is also, somehow, finished.

Outgrowing someone does not erase what they were to you. The years are still real. The memories are still yours. The person they were to you during a specific chapter of your life mattered exactly as much as it felt like it did it is just that the chapter closed and a new one opened and they are not in it the same way.

Give yourself permission to grieve it without making it a drama. Let people go without needing a reason big enough to justify the distance. And trust that the people who are meant to be in your next chapter will find their way into it not because you forced it, but because you left room.

9. What Embarrasses You Now Will Not Matter 

I wasted so much energy at 22 being embarrassed about things that genuinely do not matter at 23. The post I was afraid to publish. The thing I wanted to try but did not because what if it went badly. The opinion I kept to myself. The start I kept delaying because it did not feel polished enough yet.

Here is what I know now: the embarrassing moments fade. They fade faster than you think and they matter less than they feel like they do in the moment. Nobody is keeping score of your awkward attempts the way your own brain is. People are too busy worrying about their own to catalogue yours.

But the things you did not do? Those stay with you differently. Not as embarrassment as a quiet, persistent wondering. What if I had just started. What if I had just tried. What if I had cared less about how it looked and more about whether I actually did it.

Start the thing. Post it. Try it. Do it before it is ready and let it be imperfect in public. The regret of trying and failing is something you recover from. The regret of never trying is something you carry. If you want, you can start to romanticize your life again.

10. Ready Is A Feeling That Never Fully Arrives Start Anyway

This is the last one and I saved it for last because it is the one I most needed to hear and the one I most consistently ignored.

I was waiting to feel ready for so many things at 22. Ready to start the blog. Ready to be more intentional about my habits. Ready to make the change I kept circling around. Ready to begin the thing that I kept telling myself I would begin when the timing was better, when I knew more, when I felt more certain.

The timing never got better. The certainty never arrived. Ready, as it turns out, is not a feeling that comes before you start. It is a feeling that comes after after you have already begun, already made the mistakes, already figured out more than you knew before you started.

You will not feel ready. Not at 22, not at 25, not at 30. The people you admire who seem ready did not wait for the feeling either they just started and let the doing catch them up to where they needed to be.

Start before you are ready. Start messy, start uncertain, start with half the information and none of the confidence. Start anyway. That is the only version of starting that actually exists.

I wrote this for 22-year-old me. But I also wrote it for you wherever you are in your early twenties, whatever you are quietly carrying, whatever you have been waiting for permission to feel or say or start.

Consider this the permission.

You do not have to have it figured out. You do not have to be further along. You do not have to perform certainty you do not feel or pretend the hard parts are not hard. You just have to keep going a little more honestly, a little more gently with yourself, and a little less afraid of beginning before everything is perfect.

That is enough. You are enough. Even right now, exactly as you are, in the middle of figuring it all out you are enough.

And if you are working on building better habits and showing up for yourself more consistently, the free habit tracker on the blog is a small but real place to start. 🌙

💬 Tell me in the comments what is the one thing you wish someone had told you earlier? I will read every single one.