26 Things That ACTUALLY Happen After You Turn 26
1. You realize that you have the intention to eat healthy every day, exercise, do squats, read inspirational bathroom towels, and call grandma, but the reality is you are just too fucking lazy to do any of that. You had a streak for five weeks when you were 22 but once the highs of that tapered down you just couldn’t give less of a shit. It’s so much easier to eat vegetables maybe three times a week and then have a mini quarter life meltdown on Wednesday and have three peanut butter cups for dinner instead. It’s the thought that counts.
2. Your adult self and your inner child meld into one sloppy, emotionally unstable being that is responsible for paying bills, holding down whatever job you have, and crying between the hours of 8 and 10 p.m. on Friday because your dad didn’t take you to family fun night when you were 10. You sort of felt like an adult when you turned 21 because you had a glass of Arbor Mist and made a LinkedIn account, but deep down you feel like a walking human child man-baby full of unbridled emotion and cravings for unconditional love and gyros.
3. You don’t have the energy to scrub, moisturize, tone, AND use eye cream every single day, so choose three of those four days a week and get ready to wake up with your eyelashes glued together with old mascara and eye goobers the rest of the time.
4. You have a panic attack because while at the same job you told yourself you would quit four years ago, your new managers are now younger than you and constantly remind you of why you should have maybe kept taking your ADD meds regularly so you didn’t constantly start and stop things in your early 20s and you would, like, maybe own a mansion by now? WHO KNOWS?
5. The only new furniture you own is a lamp shade from Target and a lamp base from Target. Everything else used to belong to your old roommate or your ex left it behind. Or you got from the side of the street for free. It’s good for the planet.
6. You realize you never really know how much money your peers actually have. It’s all a guessing game that makes your heart race at night from anxiety. Because ruminating about it will make you richer faster.
7. You feel guilty for feeling validated when you find out someone your age also has all the same issues you do. It’s like finding your lost tribe of people who can’t stick to one thing for a period of time or think about consequences.
8. You fantasize about the joy it would bring to sleep for three days straight and skip all of your responsibilities. Who would come break your door down and come barging in? But it’s only a thought — you need money to buy barbecue chicken, so go make that bread, sir.
9. You finally stop buying journals and only writing in three pages and leaving them empty the rest of the year. In fact, you realize the sheer horror of reading your subconscious on paper and avoid that at all costs, so you just leave those thoughts in the treasure chest of your mind.
10. Your exercise routine is taking up jogging for three days and then letting your muscles rest for six months. Rinse and repeat.
11. You read about the benefits of going to therapy and practicing meditation but prefer the quick and unstable route of buying charcoal shots from Whole Foods and using a sheet mask once in a while in order to change your life for the better. Self-love is real.
12. You feel accomplished if you’ve had steady bowel movements for a week straight.
13. You feel like an impostor when you enter a Forever 21, even though you still get carded for whipped cream and matches, and you think the youngsters can see right through you and your waist length tunic shirts. I love a good deal on a mesh bodysuit just as much as the next gal.
14. Some of you realize how much of a waste of money buying cute underwear is when no one can even see it, so you either invest in granny panties or go commando.
15. You may have the biological urge to reproduce but realize you can’t even keep your damn laundry off the floor for more than two days. Are those plates on your dresser? Disgusting…
16. A lot of indigestion sounds in quiet rooms.
17. You may rent a room or own a house, but the idea of you accomplishing or owning anything significant in your parents’ mind is the equivalent of you playing house, and you are treated as such.
18. You read symptoms of different mental and physical illnesses and have concluded you may be everything listed in the DSM-5.
19. You know you should do one of those disease susceptibility genetic tests, but ignorance is bliss…
20. You feel pressured to live above your means but also below it at the same time.
21. You have accidentally written a script in your mind of what to tell your relatives and acquaintances when they come around the holidays to make yourself seem stable and interesting — mostly hobbies you’ve dabbled in for a week at a time in the last five years.
22. You feel like you haven’t mentally changed much since you were a teenager, but when you actually talk to teenagers, you feel like a geriatric.
23. You still don’t really have a consistent sleep schedule due to anxiety and GERD. Thank you, caffeine.
24. Speaking of caffeine, you’ve tried to give up coffee but go back to the juice a few days later because it’s unfortunately one of the only things you look forward to the next morning.
25. Each coming birthday after 26 just feels like the same age for the next 1o years.
26. On a last but happier note, you realize you share a common bond with all of humanity, being no one knows what is happening and we are all doomed in the end.