growing up a little at a time, then all at once
on birthdays, turning 23, and what I learned from 22
Today is my birthday. My twenty-third, to be exact. It’s nothing special, really. When you turn twenty-three, there are no new societal rites of passage to be had, unlike becoming an official adult when you turn eighteen, or getting to drink legally when you’re twenty-one. It’s just another number. But maybe the lack of a societal significance can be exciting—because of this absence of a universal importance found in turning twenty-three, the slate is blank, and I am given an opportunity to create one for myself. I get to decide why it matters to me.
Every year on this day, March 5th, I find myself reliving the same bittersweet sentiment over and over again, which causes me to reflect on the person I am now compared to the year before, and realize just how much has changed in the year that has elapsed. I also do this on New Year’s Eve, and on anniversaries of specific events or milestones, but especially on my birthday.
Growing up in a Filipino family, my parents and grandparents hosted a handful birthday parties in my honor throughout my childhood—a great excuse to not only celebrate another year for me around the sun, but to also bring out the plastic fold-out tables from the garage and adorn them with festive tablecloths and party platters of assorted classic Filipino dishes like lechón, pancit, kare-kare, sinigang, lumpia; the list could go on and on, and it always did. We don’t play about party food. There were also rented bouncy houses installed in the backyard. I spent a lot of time in those with my cousins, and other kids that I thought were also my cousins but turned out to not be related to me at all, and we were all just Filipino.
Adults would come up to me at these gatherings, squeezing me, and saying things like You’ve gotten so tall! I haven’t seen you since you were a baby! You look so much like your mommy! Do you remember me? I would nod yes, but I guess I was a bad liar, because for some reason they always saw right through me and said No, you don’t, and laughed in that chipper, shrill way that all adults at parties seem to do.
Literally any and every family member who didn’t live in the Philippines would be invited to these parties, and encouraged to bring their families, along with any friends who might want to stop by, and their families, too. For a long time, I wasn’t sure who I was actually related to out of these people, because they were all Filipino or Filipino-adjacent. I don’t think I’m even a hundred percent sure now. I remember everyone being stuffed together like sardines, my gramma’s house being the aluminum can. It pretty much got equally as smelly, anyway, because of all of the emission of body heat. I also think that my grandparents were the ones mainly pushing for these parties to happen, because I know my parents have always been the more lowkey, chill celebrant types.
The last time we did something for my birthday was on my eighteenth, when we went to Disneyland. It had been my one request that year to go, because I love Space Mountain, and I wanted to kick off my “adult years” by going on my favorite ride since I was a kid: a classic, Faith-esque, ironic metaphor.
That was the last time my family and I did something bigger for my birthday, but it was also the day I realized I was growing apart from my childhood best friend. We used to be wide-eyed little losers, daydreaming together all the time about the things we could do once we finally turned eighteen. He went from being one of the first people every year to wish me a happy birthday, to being a week late to say anything at all for my eighteenth. There’s a lot more that I’m leaving out which contributed to the death of us, but it should’ve been the biggest year of our lives—finally being able to cross items off of our eighteen-year-old bucket list while still having the excuse of being stupid teenagers. But later on that year, we stopped talking at all. It devastated me for a while.
When I turned nineteen, I just wanted sushi. No irony. No metaphor. Just sushi. So, we ordered two huge sushi platters to eat at home, since everything was takeout that year, because of the pandemic just beginning. Every year since, sushi has been the dinner tradition for all birthdays in our household. And as grateful as I am for all the parties growing up, I think I’ve grown to prefer this. I guess I really am my parents’ daughter.
It might come as a surprise to some, but I’ve only ever really cried on one of my birthdays: my twentieth. I was having a difficult time processing no longer being a teenager. I had tried everything in my power to prolong my nineteenth year, but as time always does, it passed, and all of a sudden, it was my twentieth birthday. I no longer had the comfort of the suffix “-teen” at the end of my age. I felt that since I couldn’t hide behind the security blanket that the suffix inadvertently provided, I wouldn’t be given wiggle room at all for any mistakes or hesitation when it came to acting “like a grown-up”. I didn’t want this to ruin my birthday, though, so I acted like those anxieties didn’t exist to begin with.
I was doing a great job of keeping it cool the entire day. I went out to get lunch with my family and shopped around a little bit, where I got a vinyl record of Lover by Taylor Swift, and some candles I had been wanting for a while but were always sold out. My mom wanted to pay for them as a birthday gesture, but I insisted on buying them myself, as my first purchases as a twenty-year-old. I was really adamant on this.
Later that evening, we had our traditional takeout sushi dinner, and then dressed down into pajamas to sit on the couch and watch WandaVision. We’d waited until all the episodes of the season were released before we watched any of it, and the final episode happened to come out on my birthday. We binged the entire thing; all nine episodes in one sitting, and then unanimously agreed to call it a night. On my way toward the stairs to get to my bedroom, I mindlessly reached for the shopping bags from earlier that day, containing all the items I’d bought earlier. I must’ve not grabbed the bag properly, because I lost my grip and dropped it. The vinyl was okay, because it was still wrapped in plastic—and surprisingly, pretty sturdy—but the candles had all been irreparably shattered.
All at once, every single ounce of anxiety and pressure I had been repressing throughout the entire day came pouring out of me. Breaking the first things I’d bought for myself as a “real adult” by accident, out of pure carelessness felt like a metaphor to me. I think that’s really why I started breaking down, not simply because I broke my things—I could always just go to the store and get another candle. I’d entered a spiral, coming to the conclusion that this probably represented my attempts toward maturity and adulthood, and how I would always fall short of succeeding in it. I was afraid that I would always be clueless, no matter how old I got.
Later that year, Lorde freed us from the drought of new music and put out her third album Solar Power. As a long-time listener and admirer of her music, I knew that she was trying something different with this one. Something less melancholic angst scorned woman (which, don’t get me wrong, I love so dearly), and more 2000s breezy sun child beach lady. A lot of people didn’t get it. I did.
My instant favorite, upon hearing the whole thing, was “Secrets From A Girl (Who’s Seen It All)”. It was my favorite for a couple of reasons. One being that I’m a sucker for an addictive hook, and the other being that its lyrics communicated something that resonated with me so hard, especially the pre-chorus:
Couldn’t wait to turn fifteen
Then you blink and it’s been ten years
Growing up a little at a time, then all at once
Everybody wants the best for you
But you gotta want it for yourself
When I heard the song for the first time, I was still five years away from being twenty-five. And as I write this, I am only two years away—but at twenty, the feeling had occurred within me nonetheless. I remember so vividly being excited to turn specifically thirteen, because it was the first “official" teenager age. Then all of a sudden I was twenty and didn’t want to be. I’d like to call it immense progress when I say that today, I turned twenty-three, and it doesn’t cause me to enter a spiral or mental breakdown to do so. I want to be twenty-three, and I want the best for myself. On some level, I think I always have, but the difference is that now, I can say it out loud.
On a regular basis, I am already ruminating on the past and how much I’ve changed, but it is particularly on special days like this when I challenge myself to really look back on exactly where I was one year prior. I like making mental lists of everything that’s different and everything that’s stayed the same. How different does my life look now? Who are the important people in my life? Who of these people were also important to me the year before? Am I any smarter or wiser than I was a year ago? Did I get hotter? What brings me joy?
Out of all the years I’ve lived so far, I think my twenty-second has given and taken the most. I guess it somehow always feels like that; like the year that has just gone by has been the most eventful or life-altering. And maybe that’s true, but only in comparison to the years that preceded it. I think each year manages to find its own special way to catch me off guard and throw me for a loop, for better and for worse. This year was no exception.
At twenty-two, I let love lead the way. I might've wound up at a dead end, but I think it was worth it. I got lessons out of it that I probably wouldn’t have learned otherwise. So, in some twisted way, I’m glad that I went through it, but I would never do it again. At twenty-two, I learned that you can be thankful for an experience without wanting to go back to it.
The day I turned twenty-two, I also had a song release later that night. It was a love song and I don’t regret letting it share a birthday with me. I think that it just proves that I am capable of falling in love at all, which is a relief to know.
I wrote more than I thought I could. I read a lot of books and discovered new all-time favorites; ones that I had been putting off reading and then, once I started them, wondered how I ever could have let them sit on my shelves untouched for so long. I survived my first full year of grad school. I also got bangs and actually kept them this time. I didn’t just have them for a week and then clip them to the sides for months until they grew out because I didn’t have the guts to change my appearance, which is what I always did in the past when I cut bangs out of a moment of emotional crisis. I didn’t do that at twenty-two.
I also bought myself an iPad and new AirPods and gave the old ones to my little sister. I wore a lot of yoga pants. I drank more water. I finally got a Hydro Flask after having the Costco off-brand version for like five years because I thought Hydro Flasks were too expensive, and that they kept your water an equal amount of cold anyway. It turns out they do not, and my water stays cold for longer now. I also stopped being vegetarian after six years. I hit one million streams on a song for the first time ever, and then it hit two million. I got rid of more than half of my wardrobe and let my younger siblings pick out whatever they wanted before I gave the rest to Goodwill, but somehow my closet is still overflowing. I’ll probably get rid of more at twenty-three.
I think twenty-two was the year I finally started to feel like an adult. I was worried it might never click for me, and that I’d be stuck in some kind of age-based purgatory where I felt like a teenager for the rest of my life. Where my physical age went up, but my emotional and intellectual maturity reached a halt at the age of nineteen. But at twenty-two, I wasn’t afraid of that anymore. Especially toward the tail end, I made decisions based on what was best for my personal growth. I stopped making choices simply because I wanted to. I began relying on my conscience more, and evaluated the reasoning behind the decisions I made. And then I re-evaluated them, and re-evaluated them again, whenever I began to doubt I had made the right choice.
It was a year of many firsts, to say the least. I got on a plane all by myself—which itself is a great feat, after having only ever traveled with my family prior, but I think the real accomplishment here is getting in and out of TSA in under five minutes. I drove on the freeway more than seventy times, something that nobody could have gotten me to do casually in any year prior to my twenty-second. I also experienced what loss and grief truly felt like for the first time, when I said goodbye to Einstein, my best friend and oldest family dog.
I also began to question what I really thought and believed about people and systems that I had always assumed were altogether good. I re-examined my relationships to those people, as well as general concepts I had been brought up with, and came to my own conclusions, rather than absorbing the viewpoints of people I thought were wiser than me. I started to believe and put my trust into things as a result of actively choosing to, not simply because I had been brought up to do so.
Before my twenty-second year, I always thought closure was something that was given to you by the person who did you wrong. A direct (or indirect) signal from them to you that the story was finished; no more pages to turn. I understand now that closure is something that can only really be given to me, by me. I realized that even if the other person was over it, I would never feel like it was over until I decided it was. Sometimes I wonder if this is something I have always known, and if, in the past, I have purposely not given myself closure, because I’m afraid of any stillness that might accompany it. It’s a very real possibility.
Either way, at twenty-two, I decided a lot of things were over.
Recently, I noticed that I actually have a good amount of friends that are older than me. As the firstborn in my family, I’ve grown accustomed to filling roles that align with my birth order throughout my life, not only within the family unit, but in other spaces I inhabited as well. With my birthday taking place near the beginning of the year, I was always one of the older friends in my social circles. I had only really been friends with people whom I shared a birth year with, because when you’re a kid, you’re always grouped with others in the same grade level as you, whether it’s for school, youth group, sports, camps; whatever. But as I get older, I’m noticing that my friends and I are no longer grouped together because of age or grade level, but by our commonalities and passions; what we actively choose to dedicate ourselves to every day.
I asked specific friends of mine who are older than me (even if just by a month—that’s you, Kenzie) to say a few words on what they’ve learned from their twenty-third year: what they’ve learned or what they’re still learning, what they wish they’d known beforehand, what I should brace myself for—anything that came to mind about what it means to be twenty-three.
Emma: Sometimes all the big dramatic pit in your stomach needs is a boring bad job and someone to complain about it to. Take the ibuprofen! Get the space heater! If you’re in pain do something about it now. You can improvise a double boiler with a metal bowl, the chocolate doesn’t know the difference. Also do NOT let starlings find your suet you will be wasting like 15 bucks every week willingly. This part isn’t a metaphor, Faith, they are eating me out of house and home.
Kenzie: Despite the fact that I turned 23 a month ago, I DO! have a few things I’ve learned already:
Don’t ignore your feelings for the sake of others, you’ll end up killing yourself slowly
Just because an opportunity arises does NOT mean you have to take it (from a graphic designer currently swamped with freelance work)
You are not responsible for other people’s feelings. YOU DON’T HAVE TO FIX EVERYTHING!!!!!
Challenging your creativity > sticking with what’s familiar
Sometimes you just need to have a tea party with your mom
As you can see, I have had a busy February.
Kevin: It was so painfully unmemorable. But that can be great, too. 22-24 felt very blurred together in general, so I guess you can consider 23 to be the middle of the blur. I can’t mark it by anything bad or anything amazing happening to me, it was kinda just 23. I do feel like it was when I felt fully confident in who my friends are, which makes sense. University isn’t really deciding who you’re spending your time with, you are. So maybe 23 is a time to reflect on who you’ve got around you, because at this point it’s on you. All of the people I had at 23 are still here at 25, plus some awesome new ones. So be open to new people, but hold on to the ones who have stuck around!
Ginny: One of the biggest things I’ve learned at 23 years old is how to appreciate the smaller things that I am gifted literally everyday. I know this might sound cheesy but learning to just look around and find the joy that comes from things I don’t normally pay attention to on the day to day has gotten me through the toughest times in my life. Whether it’s noticing the birds singing in the morning or watching a stranger burst out laughing while catching up with a friend at a coffee shop, noticing little things like that can offer so much happiness and tranquility to your busy and chaotic days.
Another important thing I’ve learned is how important it is to surround yourself with supportive friends who truly bring out the best in you. Making music has led me to some of the best friendships I’ve had in years and this includes the lovely Faith Zapata. Along with her, our friends Kevin Hackett, Wesley Preis, and Tomás Paúl have created a little group chat called “supergroup” where all the creative planning, encouragement, and silliness happens. Not only do we create music that means the absolute world to me together, but we also catch up and remind each other that we will always have each others’ backs. Connecting with all of these insanely talented and kind-hearted people brings me so much fulfillment and reminds me how important it is that your friendships make you feel loved.
One last thing I’ve learned that I think is so important is learning how to let go. Again, probably cheesy and cliché but I feel that it’s so much easier said than done to just let go. Whether it’s letting go of people, places, or the past, it can be so challenging and painful. Everyone heals and lets go differently and I think it’s important to remember that there is no correct way of doing so, as long as you are always looking out for yourself and learning from your experiences. I just released an album about my experience at nineteen years old. That was 5 years ago, and I am just now feeling like I have fully let that part of my life go and it took immense effort and reflection to get here. But I feel like I can finally say that I am happy with where I am. With all that said, I think something to look forward to when turning 23 years old is the beauty in noticing a stranger's laugh and the relief when you can finally breathe and let go. Your mistakes will feel less like cringey and painful memories and more like freeing reminders that you just did what you knew how to do.
Elle: Figure out a good morning routine that gets you out of bed every morning. Find good hobbies that don’t make your work life so dreary. Find your sense of individuality and learn how to fit into your own skin. Start journaling. Recognize your strengths rather than just your shortcomings. Perfect the art of writing a very nice, passive aggressive email. Never stop wanting to learn. Keep up with current events. Tell the people you love that you love them often. Recognize the life changing importance of a good pair of jeans. Know how to apologize properly. Know how to stand up for yourself. Learn how to eat alone. Realize that friendship is so crucial. Never, ever date for the sake of dating. If you have a bad gut feeling about someone, you’re probably right. Be honest about what you love. Always practice introspection. In that vein, always take a few moments to appreciate your surroundings.
Grace: I am about 28% of the way through my 23rd year, which is my girlfriend’s lucky number, so that’s already a good sign. I feel like I’ve gotten better at letting go, and knowing when I need to. I’m better at reading myself and knowing when topics have lingered too long. I’m better at knowing when I can do more for myself and the people around me, and I’m better at jumping into action about it. I’m better at choosing my fights in a way that honors me.
I’m better at those things because of the people I prioritized around me, including myself, which was more of a lesson I learned during my 22nd year: the people and energy that surround you can have an incredibly powerful influence over your life. I knew I wanted to love and befriend and be around people who felt like they had an obligation to bettering themselves and their communities, people who head for the greater good in everything they do, people who understand, uplift, empower. And then I knew I needed to make changes. And then I knew strength, which is always something that had resided in me, and remains a word I have a challenging relationship with because I would love to be something other than “strong” sometimes, but I knew strength in a new way because of the people I prioritized around me.
I’m learning how to let love be a teacher. I am learning how to let other people guide me around themselves instead of making predictions. I am learning how to go easy on myself, how to practice self-compassion, how to hold other people and hold my own. I am constantly having thank-f*ck-I-stayed moments. I am eternally knowing I lived through it to get to this moment, and I grieve for the parts of myself I thought I lost along the way. I’m learning they all live forever in me. I am learning to throw caution to the wind and see what happens because I want to shed willfulness this year. And in that seeing what happens, I’m learning how to know what to do when enough is enough. I am learning that there are endless options, and you can usually change your mind.
I am learning what it feels like when I know I won’t change my mind.
Lucas: At 23, I learned a lot; the biggest lessons were the hardest. I learned that platonic love is so important, and just as important is learning who to surround yourself with. Friendships help us learn more about ourselves and keep our “cups” full when we’re struggling. I learned that cognitive dissonance is a real thing, and that when you know something is wrong and you are given blatant signs, do what is right even when it’s hard. Life is full of love, we just need to see it. Do what’s right, always, and love your friends hard.
Maryam: oh, you are in for a roller coaster. my 23rd trip around the sun was filled with so many ups and downs. i learned so much about myself, what i like, and definitely what i don’t like. in my 23rd year, i moved to the UK on my own. it was the first time i was so far away from home. the first few months were so hard, juggling a new country and convincing my parents it was a good decision. i was so excited, but so scared. throughout the year, i learned that i like being alone, but i like being close to family more. i became really homesick at one point. it was so depressing (lol). overall, the whole experience taught me to be persistent and make the most out of my situation. i had to keep reminding myself i am in the UK and i might never come back here again, so let’s make this experience my b*tch. there was a mindset shift when i turned 24—i went from being scared of the big wide world to grabbing it by the balls and making it my own! i hope you make your 23rd trip around the sun your b*tch! and have the most fun! <3 <3 <3
Simon: things i learned at 23
it’s okay not to know what you’re doing
i am older than i’ve ever been, and younger than i’ll ever be
remembering is painful, but it’s essential to accepting what you’ve been through and moving forward
treat every moment like you’ll never get another one
everything is a learning experience if you look at it the right way. there’s a lesson in everything, sometimes we just need to be willing to look for that lesson.
Sara: I don’t remember much from the day of my twenty-third birthday, but I never meant for it to be that way. Though admittedly, I made no plans, took no photos, and held no hopes for the day. Those milestone birthdays, drenched in the sparkly excitement of crystallizing independence and identity, which I had spent my childhood growing towards had come and gone. I had already turned into a teenager, a legal adult, a legal consumer of alcohol. It felt like I was just turning twenty-three. It was unnervingly plain. Plain because I realized this was it—I wasn’t still growing into the start of my life, I was already alive. Unnerving because, well, that’s unnerving—I was alive, but life was nowhere near as stable or sparkling as I always pictured it would be. So, on the precipice of my twenty-third birthday, I resigned myself to a sort of faceless sleepiness that would, hopefully, never be so enlivened as it was at freshly thirteen, or eighteen, or twenty-one, never to be awoken—not in fright, nor excitement, nor sorrow, nor love, nor failure, nor blooming.
Now, at twenty-three and eight months, I double-check my camera roll to see if I took at least one photo to remember anything of my own birthday. I find nothing. I keep scrolling, suddenly terrified that my lethargy bled out of control and made my entire twenty-third year thus far void of anything meaningful at all. As I scroll, a timeline of events becomes no clearer, but a photo here or there floods my viscera with emotions of unexpected potencies. Thankfully, my viscera flooded with fright, and excitement, and sorrow, and love, and failure, and blooming. Eight months ago, my freshly twenty-three-year-old self shied away from a life of continuing and redundant uncertainty. Still, I’m here and feeling it all. Twenty-three is a year that has slowed down by metrics of the chronically tangible, yet grows expansive in my mind as interminably full of meaning and a feeling that I never want to be so asleep again.
I met and became friends with each of the people above in our very own weird, special ways. Some of them I’ve known my entire life, some since high school, some for a couple years, and some even for just a few months—either way, before meeting each of them, I could have never predicted the impact of each individual friendship on my life. But isn’t that kind of how the best things in life end up happening to you? Unexpectedly?
All in all, I believe that twenty-two has treated me well. It’s also put me through the wringer in ways I hadn’t been before, and made me realize there are depths to my emotions I hadn’t known existed. Twenty-two was a unique year for me, in the sense that it was quite literally exactly what Taylor Swift said it would be all those years ago at my ripe age of eleven: happy, free, confused, and lonely at the same time. Miserable and magical. (Oh yeah.) Because somehow, I’ve never felt so much love in my life, yet feel as alone as I did at twenty-two.
I learned a lot about myself and my place in the world and people’s lives. I learned more than I ever anticipated, and the scary part is, I haven’t even come close to learning everything. No one ever does. Every time you think you’ve got the hang of it, something happens to you that proves you don’t. And then you just keep learning more lessons, and—hopefully—keep trying to get better until your time runs out. It freaks me out a little, thinking of how many more of these lessons await me at twenty-three, but I find comfort in knowing I won’t be alone for any of it. I’ve got good people in my corner.
Today, I am twenty-three, and I think I am ready to get better, even if that means having to face the things I’m afraid of. That doesn’t mean I’m any less terrified, though. I’m ready to utilize my strength; to put the emotional muscles I’ve built up at twenty-two to real work. I’m ready to incite real change within myself, while still remaining true to the core parts of me. I believe I am capable of it. I’m ready to welcome the unexpected, and to try to handle it with just the right amounts of grace and chaos. Today, I am twenty-three, and I’m ready to test the wisdom I’ve gained from the lessons I’ve learned, and to pave my own way toward the person I was always meant to be. I think I’m ready to meet her, and to grow up—a little at a time, then all at once.
this was so beautiful and resonated with me so much as a 23 year old myself ! i hope you had a lovely birthday faith!!!
i loved this !! happy belated birthday!! this is giving teenage dream by olivia rodrigo <3