33

I'm not starting over. I never was.

It’s my birthday today. Thirty-three.

And I’m not going to tell you it is a milestone or a fresh start or any of the language we are handed when a number rolls over.

My family has this sweet and funny tradition. No matter where we are or what we are in the middle of, the moment the clock strikes midnight into the birthday of one of us, in their time zone, they get a video call. The whole fam. Parents, siblings, partners, pets. Everyone is there.

I got this call at midnight today. And when my dad asked me the question one of us always asks eventually on these calls, “How do you feel now, being thirty-three?” I wasn’t sure how to answer.

On one hand, the number simply rolled over. But when I sat with it, what I felt was that I am not where I wanted to be at this age. Except that “wanted” was never mine. It was my teenage idea of a future me. Built through the lens of society, in a world that changes every single day.

Because the thing about birthdays, especially when you are a woman, is that they arrive pre-loaded with a question you didn’t ask. Are you where you are supposed to be? Have you fixed the things? Are you smaller, calmer, more finished than last year?

And I stopped myself mid-thought, realising I am not interested in that pre-loaded bullshit question anymore (and no I won’t apologise for cursing either).

I spent a lot of years being finished by other people. Made smaller. Made quieter. Made into a shape that fit inside someone else’s life. There is a whole book in me about it, which I will finish writing eventually, and some days it guts me to go back there.

But you know what? There is so much that I know at thirty-three that I didn’t know at twenty-three, or even last year:

The woman they tried to make disappear didn't disappear. (And by they I mean society, people, anyone.. really).
She just went into storage.

And this year, I took her out.

So instead of resolutions, instead of a list of what I’m letting go, here are thirty-three things I have actually learned. Not aspirations. Not affirmations I’m hoping become true. Things I know now, in my body, the hard way.

Restack the ones that are yours. Save them. Come back to this post whenever you need. Send them to whoever needs them.

1. The version of you someone else tried to build was never you. It was a costume you were made to wear.

2. You don’t come back to yourself all at once. You come back in pieces, in colours, in a single item you finally let yourself wear.

3. Grey hair at thirty is not a flaw. It’s just information, proof, about being alive.

4. The people who questioned how you dressed were never worried about you. They were uncomfortable that you existed differently.

5. Sobriety taught me that the hardest thing and the most freeing thing are often the exact same thing.

6. You can leave a place, a person, a country, a whole life, and still be entirely yourself when you land. Especially then.

7. Yellow is not too loud. You were just taught that being seen was dangerous.

8. A body in freeze is not a broken body. It is a body that kept you alive the only way it knew how.

9. The clothes you are saving for when you are “ready” are waiting for a permission that already belongs to you.

10. Nobody is coming to hand you your life back. You reach in and take it.

11. Being “too much” for someone is just being the right amount for yourself in front of the wrong audience.

12. Your nervous system remembers what your mind tries to forgive. Listen to it.

13. Softness is not weakness. Some days the armour is silk, not steel.

14. The grief you carry for the years you lost is real. You are allowed to mourn them. You are also allowed to stop letting them define you.

15. A grandmother’s blouse can hold more presence than the woman herself is here to give. Keep it. Wear it.

16. You do not owe anyone the smaller version of you they got comfortable with.

17. Home isn’t where you are from. Sometimes it is the city that gave you back to yourself.

18. The cat who stayed with you through the worst of it is not “just a pet.” She was an anchor. Say thank you.

19. Compliance dressed up as practicality is still compliance.

20. You can be serious and care deeply about clothes. Depth and surface were never opposites.

21. The industry will tell you to dress for your age or ‘perfect’ size. Read that as: disappear on schedule. Refuse!

22. What you survived is not a personality trait. But what you built afterward is.

23. Nobodys timeline is yours. The calendar is a suggestion, not a verdict.

24. You are allowed to want to be seen. Wanting visibility is not vanity. It’s a birthright you were talked out of.

25. The red you stopped reaching for is still your colour. It was always your colour.

26. Financial independence is not a luxury for women. It’s the ground you stand on to say no.

27. You can love someone and still know their approval is not the thing holding you up. You are.

28. Everything they told you is “too” about you (too loud, too bright, too much, too sensitive) is the exact thing that saves you in the end.

29. The mirror is not the enemy. The voice you were handed to look in it with is.

30. Starting true is scarier than starting over. Do it anyway.

31. You don’t have to feel ready to be ready. Ready is a decision, not a feeling.

32. The woman you were becoming before the world got to you? She is still in there. She’s been waiting. She’s patient like that.

33. I am not finished. Thank god. Finished is just another word for done, and I have so much left to do.

Thirty-three years.

Some of them stolen. Many of them frozen. Some of them so good they almost don’t feel real.

But all of them mine now. Every single one. Even the ones I would give back if I could, because they are the reason I know exactly who I am when I open the closet in the morning and reach for the thing that feels like me.

I’m not dressing for anyone I used to be.

I’m not dressing for anyone who tried to make me small.

I’m dressing for her. The one who waited.

And today, on my birthday, she gets to wear whatever the hell she wants!

Which of these is yours today?
The one that landed, the one you needed, the one you are restacking or screenshotting. Tell me in the comments.

It’s my birthday and the thing I want is to know who is in here with me.

I write The Style MYND Edit every week. The identity we carry into our wardrobes, the permission we have been waiting for, and what it looks like to get dressed like you are allowed to exist. Because you are.