anjo🧿

I think I’ve spent most of this year feeling late.

Late to healing. Late to moving on. Late to becoming the person I thought I’d be. Late to a life that seems to be happening for everyone else.

It’s ridiculous when I write it down.

I’m twenty four.

Twenty four.

And yet somehow I’ve convinced myself I’ve missed deadlines that were never real to begin with.

I don’t know when life became a race.

Maybe somewhere between graduation and now.

Maybe the first time someone my age got engaged. Or bought a house. Or announced a pregnancy. Or landed the dream job. Or posted another smiling photo that made it look like they had figured everything out.

Meanwhile, I was still trying to figure out how to survive a year that felt determined to change everything.

The truth is, I thought I’d be arriving at twenty five.

Instead, I feel like I’m beginning again.

A different home. A different version of family. A different understanding of love. A different understanding of myself.

The map I spent years following doesn’t exist anymore.

And for a long time, that terrified me.

Because if the plan disappears, what are you supposed to do? Who are you supposed to become? Where are you supposed to go?

I’ve spent months searching for answers to questions that don’t seem to have any. As if clarity is something waiting around a corner for me. As if one day I’ll wake up and suddenly know exactly where my life is heading.

But maybe nobody knows.

Maybe the people I envy are just as afraid.

Maybe everyone is standing in front of a future they can’t see.

Some are just better at pretending otherwise.

I keep thinking about how many versions of myself have existed already.

The girl who sat her exams.

The girl who fell in love.

The girl who lost it.

The girl who became someone’s entire world.

The girl who became a stranger.

The girl who stood at a funeral and realised life was far less permanent than she’d believed.

The girl who packed boxes.

The girl who unpacked them.

The girl writing this now.

Every single one of them thought they knew what came next.

None of them were right.

And somehow that’s comforting.

Because every time life surprised me, I survived it.

Not perfectly.

Not gracefully.

But enough.

Enough to get here.

I think the hardest part about your mid twenties is that nobody prepares you for the in between.

You’re no longer young enough to believe everything will magically work itself out, but not old enough to look back and understand why any of it happened.

You just exist in the middle.

The in between relationship.

The in between career.

The in between version of yourself.

The one where you’re constantly introducing yourself to people because you’re still trying to figure out who you’re becoming.

Lately I’ve found myself thinking about timelines again.

A dangerous hobby, really.

At twenty one, I thought twenty five sounded so grown up. The kind of age where you owned matching furniture and knew what to say when people asked where you saw yourself in five years.

Now that it’s here, I mostly just stare at my ceiling and wonder how everyone else seems so certain.

I had a plan once.

Actually, that’s a lie.

I had hundreds.

Every year I rewrote them.

Different jobs.

Different cities.

Different people standing next to me.

Different endings.

Life read absolutely none of them.

Instead it handed me a plot twist.

Then another.

And another.

It’s funny. The moments that changed me most weren’t the ones I planned for.

Nobody schedules heartbreak.

Nobody marks grief on a calendar.

Nobody predicts the random Tuesday that becomes the day everything starts over.

Yet somehow those moments become the landmarks.

The before and afters.

The versions of yourself you can never quite return to.

And maybe that’s why twenty five feels so strange.

Because I’m not mourning getting older.

I’m mourning certainty.

The certainty that things would happen in a particular order.

The certainty that effort guaranteed outcomes.

The certainty that if I loved hard enough, worked hard enough, planned hard enough, life would reward me exactly as expected.

It doesn’t.

Life just keeps moving.

And so do we.

Sometimes unwillingly.

Sometimes kicking and screaming.

But we move.

I move.

I used to think that twenty five would arrive with answers.

Not all of them. I'm not unreasonable. But enough of them that I'd feel settled. Enough that I'd stop introducing myself to people as a work in progress and rather, somebody who has entirely and absolutely found herself.

Trouble is, I'm a little lost.

A little over a year ago, twenty five looked different. It had a shape to it, this big, bright P.L.A.N. A timeline. Milestones lined up neatly beside each other like books on a shelf. I thought I'd arrive here with certainty. With a person. With a plan and a happy ending I so desperately deserve.

Maybe that's the strange thing about growing up. The grief that comes with outgrowing versions of yourself you quite liked. The life I had imagined at 20, no longer exists and never can. Theres a quiet sadness in that. Learning to be okay with that.

I learnt new roads.

I sat in unfamiliar offices.

I made new routines with all the time I now had that belonged to someone else before.

And somehow, without noticing, the things that once felt impossible, became ordinary.

That's what scares me about 25. How quickly life can become unrecognisable.

Growing up was never about arriving somewhere else, its understanding there is no plan and learning to be okay with that.

The ability to start again.

To find certainty. To stop longing in the search for it.

54 days and the frontal lobe does its thing.

I don't think i stop enough to think about just how much has changed in the last year. I'm single for the first time in my twenties which has been the most soul changing experience, scary on the best of days. We moved family home to a complete new area, after twenty four year of living in the same home, dads home. We started over. I think we almost had to. So much heartbreak had happened in that home, we were tangled in the memories of what was far too often, often enough that we couldn't quite imagine what would be. So we left.

With that, I also decided to move job too. I had dreamt of being a financial analyst for as long as I had picked that finance would be my path. And now, I get to work for a medical devices company doing exactly that, and helping people. Serving people. Saving people.

I started to move my body. Pilates.I had spent the last three years feeling the most unseen I had ever felt on this earth. isn't it crazy how one person has the ability to confine you into such a box that you're afraid to come out even after they dump it in the water to drown. Much rather, I drowned. Somehow, after many months at sea with my thoughts, trying to staying afloat amidst all the questions, the pain and the longing I felt, I survived. An entire 12 months since you left.

Out of everybody I lost, I missed myself the most. Not in a self deprecating way, not even in a "nothing is ok" sort of way. Just in the realisation that there were versions of me that only existed back then. Ways I laughed more easily, ways I spoke without second guessing, ways I felt lighter because someone knew me in that specific season of my life. I miss being my dad's daughter, and not in the heavy, lonely way I carry today. But I miss who I was when I felt safe no matter where or what. I miss having a dad. Feeling loved beyond belief.

So yes, turns out an entire twelve months had passed me by and although I've felt like I've stood entirely stuck, still. So much had evolved and changed about me and guess what, I adapted. I leaned, I'm learning and I'm accepting.

Somehow it's June tomorrow, which means it's 6 months through the year. Another year. Which means I'm 25 next month. Shit.

Anyways, check in complete-

May 31st 2026.

Lots of love,

this is the last month, of the last year you loved me in. and i don’t say that with anger, resentment or even regret. i say it with the kind of sadness that only comes from realising something beautiful has officially moved into the past tense. the last year i’ll be loved by you, to be known and held by you. the last time ill hear your voice or the warmth of your laugh radiate through my home. i loved you more than anything. than everything. the type of love your heart can only bare once, the special kind, the kind that you think about for the rest of your life. only god knows how much i miss you. i think about you often. i do.

here’s to the end of 2025, our last chapter.

31-12-2025