Each age brings its own special kind of trauma, but 26?
Intellectually, those of us who are 26 know we are still young. But emotionally, it feels like the cachet of youth is slipping through our fingers. You don’t know what’s going on, you don’t know when you will.
Out of nowhere, people start referring to you as “relatively young” instead of just “young,” and you think: “Relative to what, exactly?” Half of your friends are married with kids (or well on their way), while the others are still learning how to drink without blacking out.
Internally, you still feel like a kid. Externally, people stop cutting you the slack of one. If you were lucky enough to be on your parents’ health insurance in the first place, that’s gone now, too. There’s a general uneasiness, an invisibility that you didn’t have at 18, at 21, that you hopefully won’t have at 30.
This is probably why it struck such a nerve on the internet when the popular science creator Hank Green posted a tweet and subsequent TikTok last month saying, “I hope all of the 26 year olds are doing ok,” in a soft, sympathetic coo (that we responded to because we’re actually just babies).
Over 67,000 presumed 26-year-olds liked the tweet. Thousands commented on the TikTok, and multiple people stitched the video with responses to his inquiry, resulting in relatable, darkly funny depictions of life in the balance.
The 26-year-olds, it seems, are not OK.
“I’m still in school. I have literal scoliosis. All my friends are either pregnant or married — I am neither. And I show up to all events alone,” said the creator @muanikirose.
“I can’t speak for all the 26-year-olds,” said @copacetickyle, “but I use Tylenol all the time and I’m usually sad.”
In a video for @biteable, a creator acts out out the quintessential drama of being 26 in a corporate environment: “Dear boss, I noticed you didn’t use an exclamation mark in your last message. Are you mad at me? Am I fired? Thanks.” It was played 2.5 million times.
Some of the TikToks are infused with a nihilistic sense of humor that runs through the veins of most young millennials.
The creator @sorryidonthaveanychange stitched a video of himself shaving his head, jokingly wrapping the cord around his neck. It was viewed nearly 1 million times.
In real life, 26-year-olds everywhere are dealing with their own existential crises that, to be fair, probably would have come with or without the pandemic. But spending the last year indoors — thinking, analyzing, comparing — didn’t help.
Leanna Bremond, a music supervisor in Los Angeles, remembers her a ha moment. “When I hit maybe 24 or 23, it was like … I am alone,’ and then 26 just put the stamp on it. I’m riding on my own survival. I have to feed myself. Keep this roof over my head. It’s all on me, and I didn’t recognize that pressure until 26.”
Bremond continues with a laugh: “Like, if I slip up one day? Girl, I could die!”
Others have worried that they’re not meeting this benchmark of independence quickly enough.
When the pandemic hit, Jocelyn Luna, a media coordinator in Las Vegas, started to ask herself, “What am I doing with my life? Am I a loser because I’m at home at 26 with my parents and never left?”
For her, being this age can be compared to downing three shots — turmoil, confusion and frustration — with no chaser.
For many, 26 is a time of extreme transition with minimal societal support.
Kayla Edem, an operations manager in Los Angeles, is turning 27 next month. This period of her life has taught her to reclaim her timeline — despite what her friends are doing, despite what society is telling her she should do, despite what she thought she would be doing when she was 20.
“There’s all different sides of the spectrum, and people are having very different experiences of being 26,” Edem says.
