There is no scrutiny greater than the one we place ourselves under; to move through life in a constant state of comparison is in our nature. Even if we don’t like to admit it, there is no being without it. Whether this is between friends, family, or strangers, the way we consider ourselves is inherently shaped by the way we consider others.

My fashion choices are influenced by the celebrities I admire, my music by the mix CDs my Dad would make every summer of my childhood, my opinions drawn from lengthy conversations with my siblings or my closest friends. We are a sum of everything that we consume, leaving a trail behind us as we advance year-on-year.

I find it slightly unnerving that my camera roll dates back to 2014. In over 70,000 photos, I have managed to capture every version of myself over the last nine years – whenever I want to I can dive back into those parts of my youth and remember what it felt like to be me in that moment. But before that – aside from the questionable content that my 13-year-old self shared on my Facebook account – my childhood exists solely in my head, wobbly home videos, and the developed film my dad keeps in our loft. In me is the little girl who cut the strap on her mum’s Birkenstocks when she wasn’t getting her own way, and so is the 18-year-old who took a last minute gap year to avoid going to university.

Hindsight (a beautiful thing) is what allows us to make these comparisons between past versions of ourselves. I’ve always felt like me – always laughed the same, always loved the same – but I marvel at how clear things become by the time we’ve moved past them. I wince at the cursory decisions I made as a teenager, even more so at the ones I’ll undoubtedly still make. It goes to show that we’ll never really understand the implications of our choices until we’re much farther down the line, when all of those decisions hold so much more, or so much less, weight than we could have perceived in the moment. I still advocate for the efficacy of the Birkenstock method, by the way.

There are so many people that I collected along the way, some who stuck, others who diverted off my path in order to continue with their own; each offering a little piece of themselves that naturally became a part of me too. It’s still like that when I meet new people, this tapestry of who they are and who I am. It’s like shuffling through a stack of postcards at a museum until you find one that just fits, and suddenly there’s no question that it always belonged with you. I love the way my friendships have grown as my friends and I have; the foundation remains but the priorities change, the conversations change.

I’ve learnt to appreciate the way that some things don’t stay the same from one week to the next. I used to hate the idea of my routine being disrupted, but now I think it just serves as proof that even when we are most fed up, there is something new and different just around the corner. Whether we are happy or sad, all of those moments are fleeting.

I’m acutely aware of the fact I’m getting older, aware that all of my little cousins are now on the brink of adulthood themselves, aware that we have to travel home for family parties and holidays rather than just being there, aware that these are the years I’ll consider some of the most pivotal (aware that I love a list). I’m at that point now where everything I feel, I feel so much more than I did before. I get this sense that it’s all so important, but I’m unable to focus on it until I’ve moved past the moment, looking back on it. I felt it catch me in the street the other day – the sun was shining and I was perfectly warm, on my way to meet a friend, and I couldn’t believe that I was the same person I had been all my life. It was as though I’d closed my eyes and woken up somewhere completely new, knowing that it could have only been me that put myself there. I suppose there is nothing to do but try and take it all in before I shed this version for the next.