, 21 min read
This Is Me at 25
It is February 12th, 2024. This is what happens when I try to record a video. Hey, how’s it going? Today is February 12th, 2024. I am 25 years old. This is me.
This is my face on a good day. This is me with no makeup. I’ve been going makeup-free a little more often this year. These are my eyes and how they crinkle now. I actually think these baby wrinkles make my eyes twinkle. This is my room. It’s the first room I’ve ever had that I’ve been able to go all out decorating. I think since I wasn’t allowed to decorate when I was a child, I think I wanted to make this room kind of my childhood dream.
It’s so strange to think that you only get to be each age for one year, and one year is so incredibly short.
25 was one of the best years ever, and I’ll never be 25 again. Let’s start with an easy question:
How am I doing? How am I doing as a general question?
Health issue and father's death
If I’m talking about all year, it’s definitely been up and down, up and down, up and down. The difference is what kind of struggle that it has been.
When times were bad this year, I went through a lot of fear. There was a lot of fear, mostly anxiety over my health because I had health issues. It was also loss, because I lost my dad before just a couple days before my birthday throughout year of 25.
I’ve been going through that, which has been a very complicated, complex process that I feel has barely even started. So apart from that and another crisis within the family that impacted me very strongly, okay, so that’s the overall how I’ve been doing. It was up and down, and and throughout this year also was with my current boyfriend, and that was overall positive. He’s been an overall positive part of my life and something that added a lot of light and joy. Overall, even though it was up and down throughout that throughout the year, my mind and mindset were much stronger this year. So even when times were horrible and tough, I felt stronger throughout it, which was really cool.
Did you enjoy being 25, and what was it like?
So, I’m asking myself this question because I know that when I was like any age younger, like a teenager even, I always wondered what it would be like and feel like to be 25, which I felt was a very old age. Like, I know that I felt that I would have it all figured out at this age. I wrote an essay in high school, where I talked about being 25 and that I would have my cabin in Colorado, and I would own a dog, and I would already have a career started, and I already went to college. I definitely overestimated the amount of things that would have happened by now.
So, to be 25, I would say that it, it was an awesome age to be. I felt emotionally and mentally, and within myself, I felt the best that I ever have. I felt the most confident.
I liked being 25, and actually, I’m going to miss it a lot. But luckily, 26 is probably going to be very close to 25. I know that I said in my 23 video that it’s all downhill from that age, and that’s a lie. It’s a lie. It’s not true at all. I was so terrified of aging, and I still am scared of it, but less scared and more chill.
Things getting better and better
To be 25, you’re not going downhill, like you don’t feel like you’re going downhill. I think I imagined that I would feel that I was going downhill, but I don’t. It feels like things are getting better and better, and it feels like things are going up and up and up.
So, anybody younger who’s listening, just know that as long as you make the right decisions, which just includes like some self-awareness and personal growth stuff, and self-love and, you know, growing in confidence and all of that kind of work, it’s just going to get better and better, you’re not going downhill. You don’t have to worry too much. It’s going uphill for quite a while, and I was just way too freaked out about aging, and you really don’t have to worry about it for a long time.
Kind of freaking out. Honestly, almost every night before bed, I just have like a moment of freak-out. Like, how am I this old already? What happened? I blinked. I hate those thoughts, because it went slowly as well, but slow and fast at the same time. And I don’t feel my age. I’m thinking to myself right now, how it just feels like I was a teenager so recently, and that at 25, I thought I would be, I would feel older, but I don’t. I just feel like a teen, and taking walks with the sunset is such a familiar thing that I’ve always done, and it kind of transports me back to when I was a teenager, looking at the sunset. Okay, you little get scared.
For how do you feel about aging now?
This is an important topic to me because it’s been on my mind a lot.
When I was like 22, 23, I was really freaked out, really, really freaked out about aging and getting older because I thought that it would just kind of like happen all of a sudden, and everything would just fall down and fade, and you get gray hair, and wrinkles, and it just happens so suddenly. But it doesn’t.
I realized that it wasn’t really happening. I thought that I would show more signs of age faster, and that’s not the case. It’s, I still look the same overall, and this year, I did notice like my first baby wrinkles, and that kind of freaks me out a little bit.
I feel a lot more chill about aging. I just feel like so far, it’s felt like I’ve had plenty of time so far, and I know when you look in retrospect, it feels like everything went so fast. But so far, it really just feels like a long time, and I know it’s going to just go by and keep going, time.
I know that I’ll be older and look back and be like,
“You have no idea how fast it goes.”
But as long as I’m just living, aware of time, and like not wasting it as much as possible, it’s going, it’s going slower than I thought it would.
I was so scared that time and aging would just go like a race car past, and I would be 80 and look back and be like,
“Oh my God, where did the time go? I just blinked.”
And again, I know that that’s how people, that’s what people say happens, but I, at 25, looking back at 20 up to 25.
I do not feel like those years went by so incredibly quickly. I feel like they felt like years.
Admiring older women
One more thing that helped me that I want to share is that it helped me like crazy to, uh, kind of make a mental list of all the women, especially who I admire, who are older and who I think are beautiful and gorgeous women.
So I have like, they’re all like celebrities, but I have this whole list of these celebrity women who are in their 30s and 40s and beyond, who I think are just absolutely gorgeous, stunning women, and I’m like,
“Okay, so you can still be like a perfectly healthy, functioning, beautiful person, and age doesn’t have to eat you alive. You can age gracefully.”
And I hope that happens to encapsulate what 25 was. It was kind of just a like a sigh of relief.
“I’m not aging that fast. It’s all okay. I can just relax a little bit.”
Like, it was kind of a year of chilling out, and it was a year of like coming into myself more. It was a year of becoming more authentic and practicing authenticity. It was a year of practicing, having opinions and forming opinions on things and gaining confidence and practicing facing more fear and also caring a little bit less of what people say or think about you, because you know who you are. And when you know who you are, people’s opinions of you and the things that they say, you can either attach to those things and believe that that’s your identity, or you are so secure in your identity that you know what’s true and what isn’t.
That was a huge point of growth for me. So yeah, 25 for me was very positive. It feels like you’re really getting the hang of being an adult, and people are treating you like an adult more.
It’s actually really shocking and jarring to me still when other adults, like in their 30s and 40s, like in business settings as well, are treating me like an adult and giving me that respect and consideration, and I’m just like,
“I’m trying to lean into it and fake it till I make it,”
But it just feels so strange. It’s wonderful. It’s what I’ve always wanted, but it’s just, I can’t believe that it’s happening, ‘cause it’s a very big difference to when you’re younger.
Blooming
Then there’s a question that says,
“Am I proud of who I’m becoming?”
The answer is 100% yes, I am. I’m very happy with the choices that I’ve made, and I’m happy with my personal growth. I feel like I’ve grown and transformed like a butterfly.
I feel like I’m kind of blooming now, and in a lot of ways, I am the same and struggling with the same things, but in other ways, I have grown so much so that I’m barely, I can barely even recognize who I was before, especially looking at who I was as a teen and even like early 20s. I’m so different in the category of self-respect and valuing myself and knowing what value I have. God, I wish that I knew when I was younger.
Another thing is, I’ve become so much more authentically me, and I feel more free.
Letting go of people
And I’ve let go of people who I don’t want to say hold me down or tear me down, just people who suffocate me and don’t allow me to be who I am. Like, I’ve let go of different communities and people who thought or wanted me to be a specific way and who I would have to fake myself around. So now I can just be me, and everybody in my life right now, I am me, which is great.
You know, now that I’m talking about value and self-respect, I’m going to answer this question, which is,
“What advice would I give to my 21-year-old self and my 18-year-old self?”
And I would, I want to give advice to my 18-year-old self first, and I might have different advice at a different time.
But it’s really on valuing yourself, you know. The horrible thing about this is, I don’t think I would have been able to believe it or understand what I’m about to say right now, so this wouldn’t have even really been helpful. I just had to go through it and learn. But I would just say,
“You are so much more valuable than you think you are.”
Relationship don'ts
And in terms of relationships, don’t let somebody use you. Know your value.
- Don’t let somebody feel like they own you, and
- don’t give yourself to someone as if they own you,and
- don’t serve someone like you are their slave, and
- don’t let someone treat you like their slave.
You are so worthy and valuable and deserving of respect, and you deserve to have all of your needs met, and you deserve the right to say no. And you can say no. You can say no. And saying no won’t make the right people leave you. Maybe saying no will make the wrong person leave you, and that’s a good thing. But you have to say no.
If we’re on the subject of love, I’ll say to my 18-year-old self and my 21-year-old self that just because you’re in love with someone, it doesn’t mean you give yourself to that person. And again, this won’t connect unless you’re ready to hear it. But that’s not enough to just love someone and then give them yourself to them. They have to love you. They have to treat you well. It doesn’t matter if you’re in love with them. You can ignore that part. The part that matters is, is if they love you and respect you and are treating you well and pursuing you. And if they’re not, you have to learn how to move on. And for so many people, especially young people, and to myself, I would have rejected that immediately.
“There’s no way I can move on. I can’t move on. I’ll never move on.”
You can. You can. You can.
But it’s a decision. It’s a decision you have to make to change how you’re thinking about things. Think about it differently.
Heart broken
Anyway. Okay, we’re gonna just not speak anymore. I don’t know what advice I would give to my 21-year-old self. Honestly, my 21-year-old self did pretty darn good. I think that’s when I got broken up with, and I was heartbroken. So, I would just say,
“Keep your chin up. It’s going to be okay.”
There’s going to be a day when your heart is not hurting anymore, and you’re going to feel great, and you’re not going to miss that person. And I mean it’s just not going to feel the way you think it’s going to feel. You’re not going to be in pain for the rest of your life. You’re fine. You will be fine. You will be fine.
There’s one that says,
“Do I have regrets on how I spent time in my 20s?”
And so far, I’m going to say no, overall, no. Literally, everything has worked out. Everything worked and happened for a reason. And once I adopted that philosophy, whether it’s true or not, it’s true for me, and it really, really helps to have the philosophy of absolutely everything that’s happening currently and has happened in the past is leading you to something good, even if that means your own personal growth. And for me, I’ve been shown time and time again that everything that has happened in the past has led me here.
And I know so many people say that, like,
“Oh, I have no regrets, because then I wouldn’t be here now,”
But as lame and cliché as that sounds, it’s 100% true. Like, I made what I believed were mistakes at the time, like dating the wrong person or having the wrong friend group. But those decisions changed me, and I learned from them.
Like, yeah, it’s, yeah, very, very cool. And I believe that those painful memories and painful decisions that I made, they’re going to help me out in the future when I inevitably go through more hard times. I’ll know that it will work out again. I suppose I have smaller regrets, and I would say it’s wasting time. However, I haven’t yet done the things that I’ve wanted to do. And I’ve done a pretty good job, a very good job traveling, but as far as like self-development, like going to therapy, going to college a little bit, I thought I would write a book, writing a book. You know, different pursuits that you just put off and you put off and you put off. I’m trying to do those things this year.
The other regret is too much time spent on my phone. You guys, be careful, be careful. You might just spend your whole life on your phone doing nothing.
How have I changed the most this year?
How I have changed the most is the authenticity and self-respect and confidence. I really, really worked this year on having opinions and sharing them and saying things that I would normally keep to myself.
Being open and being a woman
And I’m just such a person who’s always been so withdrawn and like inside myself, and I’m closed. And I was practicing
- being open,
- being open,
- being open.
Mostly on social media, honestly. And I had a lot of my friends or people who I knew, reach out to me and tell me that it meant a lot to them that I was being so open and that it was helping them. So, that made me feel like I was on the right track. But as I was practicing being more open and more authentic and just saying what I wanted to say without fear, I would gain confidence every time, as I learned, like,
“Oh, there’s nothing wrong with me.”
I feel like confidence partially comes from feeling like you are living according to who you are. And when I started openly being myself and who I am, I felt more confident and more authentic. And I don’t know, that’s the biggest change.
And then the other biggest change that I’m very proud of and I love and I embrace and has helped me like crazy is how I feel about being a woman. I embraced being a woman and the power of being a woman. And I’ve completely let go of believing
- that I am weak as a woman, or
- that I have less value as a woman, or
- that I am less powerful.
So, I’ve really embraced the power of being a woman, and that includes supporting other women and their power and encouraging them ,and following women who know the power that they hold as well. And that’s been a journey and a discovery, and I’m still discovering it, because I grew up as a woman believing that I had no power. And now I’m slowly discovering the power of being a woman. It’s just been a huge process for me to even discover that. I just didn’t know. And I thought that a lot of things were backwards. I’m really just embracing how I want to be treated in relationships and the respect that I deserve and that I have equal rights, which is so crazy.
I am a feminist
They were, yeah, I could get into all of this whenever I want to talk about Christianity in a different video.
So I identify as a feminist, and I only want to hang around with men and women who are also feminists. I am trying my very best to repel every man from me who does not believe these things, and it’s kind of like the greatest discovery of my life this year and this past year and maybe the year before, but mostly this year, to discover that there are men out there like that. And maybe there’s a lot, but I still don’t know. But there are men out there who are feminists, and they truly love women, and they, they are supportive of these concepts. And that’s the only people, I do not want anything to do with the other kind of man.
What’s been on my mind the most, almost at 25? Did I just answer this question? I don’t even know. What would I like to say to my 30-year-old self? And that is, just comes to mind, I would like to continue growing. A lot! I never want to stop growing. And what I want to become and what I hope that I am, when I’m 30 is a very open and warm person. I would like to be the person that other people feel is so loving and warm and open and comforting to them. And I am a long way from that. That’s just how it is right now, and I’m working on it. But I would tell my 30-year-old self, “I really hope you’re like that, and I am working on it, and I’m doing my best, and that’s who I want to be.” And as long as I have a clear image of who I want to be, I think I’m going to make it.
And I hope that you’re either married to the love of your life or dating the love of your life, or you somehow magically found so much happiness and fulfillment in being single. I just really hope that you’re, that you found the person.
Could I say what am I struggling with right now?
Right now, I’ve been struggling a lot with my relationship because it’s been going up and down and maybe is kind of a steady, and I’ve been very confused, trying to, because I’m aware that in relationships, I am not a fully healthy person, and I tried my very best to pick someone who I believed was very, very, very healthy and securely attached and all of that and good family, and it was good. But I definitely chose someone who came with their own baggage and issues. And I’ve been struggling a lot to try to figure out if we are compatible. I can’t tell if it feels right or not. And people say,
“Listen to your gut.”
But I don’t even know what, what my gut is saying. Like, I can’t tell. I feel like my gut is kind of telling me something is wrong, but then I can’t really tell if it’s me that’s wrong, that like if I do things differently, or if I work on things more, you know, or if I just let go of my idea of what I thought a relationship would be like or should be like. But in that case, I don’t want to do that, because I don’t know. It’s like I don’t want to let go of what I believe I want. So, yeah, just trying to figure out if I’m with the right person and how to be like, because they say, like, “When you’re in a relationship, it’s not going to solve your problems, and you’re not going to feel 100% whole and happy, because the relationship isn’t all you need.”
And that’s true. So, I’ve been working on and trying to, find happiness and fulfillment in other relationships and trying to nurture other relationships and just have an all-around full life. And that’s it.
I don’t know. I don’t know. So, I just, I want to remember that I don’t know if I’ll be brave enough to put that in the video, but I’m just trying to, I never really had, a good example of what a healthy relationship looks like. So, I’m not sure if my expectations are actually way too low, and I’m accepting too little, or if they’re too high and our relationship is actually very normal and healthy. It’s not healthy, but normal. Like, where do we have, have as many struggles as a normal couple, or do we have more problems and struggles? Because everybody says,
“Yeah, we all have our own relationship issues and problems and things we’re working through.”
But I sometimes it feels like I have more, and trying to figure out if it’s, I don’t know. I don’t know. So, that’s where I am. I don’t, know.
It’s been interesting because overall, it’s given me a lot of peace and a lot of security overall, and it’s given me a lot of happiness overall.
13-Feb-1998 is my birthday
Today is the last day of being 25, and that was definitely me speaking to an audience. And I shan’t do that. So, we are going to restart. Today is the last… nope.
Today, let’s talk to me. This is only recorded for you. Today is the last day that I am 25. So, if somebody asks me how old I am today, I can say 25. And even though this doesn’t really connect fully in my head, it is the last time I will ever be 25 in my entire life.
There are no do-overs. But a silver lining for me is that 26 isn’t too far from 25. It’s just one year older. So, I’m okay. But I will say it is freaky. Very freaky sometimes. You know, it’s interesting. Sometimes I feel like it’s freaky and scary, and other times I feel like I don’t feel any different. This is totally fine. We’re okay.
I feel totally opposite, depending on the day. In some ways, it’s great. I think in the aging, I’m good with aging right now, and I don’t feel so depressed or hopeless about that.
But as far as getting one year closer to death, that’s what freaks me out. So, that’s why it’s scary. But I’m okay with aging. A couple weeks beforehand, I like to tell myself that I am 26, so that doesn’t scare me on the day of. So, the last couple of weeks, I’ve been already telling myself I am 26.