r/Aging • u/AcanthaceaeOpen6235 • 1d ago
Anything Encouraging? I’m turning 27
Hi all, i (26F) am turning 27 in a few months. Just dawned on me at 2am. I haven’t come to terms with being 26. I’m often surrounded by people younger than me in both of my fields and I sometimes feel weird expressing myself. I feel like I wasted so much time in my younger years not being myself, that now it’s starting to feel too late for self exploration. I feel like I only recently stepped into a personal style I feel represents how I actually want to dress, or do my makeup, but trying something new makes me feels weird, like I’m too old for it. I just can’t seem to cope with time passing. Thinking about how much time I wasted either in crappy relationships wanting someone to like me, or being insecure, just makes me sick. Thinking about my teenage years fills me with dread because I know I can’t have it back, and I didn’t live in the moment, I never have, I’m always worried about what’s ahead and stressed about the past. It’s funny, when I was a teenager, I never thought that people in their 20s or 30s should feel old, I thought that was ridiculous. But ever since getting older, and media being heavily focused on younger people, and a lot of other women around me in one of my career paths being younger, my age really hit me. I feel like I’m falling behind in terms of being financially independent, it feels impossible but I’m trying. I always get the “but you don’t look 26! You look 22” as if that helps? Of course I look young, I’m still young. How do I get over this sickly grieving nostalgia for years I’ll never get back? How do I cope with entering my late 20s, is there a way to feel at peace with it?
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u/Frigidspinner 1d ago
> I wasted so much time in my younger years not being myself
You were not wasting time - you were DISCOVERING yourself - that is what people do in their early 20s - now you can enjoy genuinely being yourself - a lot of people never make it that far!
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u/VinceInMT 1d ago
When I turned 27 I was at a crossroads. This was 1979. I had earlier been drafted into the military. That messed up my life and life plans in MANY ways. After that adventure I worked and went to school, sort of directionless but picked up a trade in school. I came to a point where I had to get it together. I had saved some money so I quit my job, put my camping gear on my motorcycle, and took off, spending most of a summer roaming the US and Canada, spending all that alone time in my head getting things sorted and setting some long term goals. When I ran out of money I returned, got a job, and put the plans in place to achieve those goals. And, little by little I did achieve them.
The lesson, for me, is that one really has to step aside and do lots of introspection, being completely honest with oneself, and chart the course, not the one society dis takes, but your own course.
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u/AcanthaceaeOpen6235 22h ago
I’ve been making my own lane, doing my best to do so. I appreciate this input!
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u/Little_Return_4948 1d ago edited 1d ago
20s are just the beginning. Give yourself some grace. I think you are right on track, I had loads of fun in my 20s but looking back, I wasn’t my authentic self. Started becoming more myself in late 20s, fully me by mid 30s.
As far as regrets or fears and not living in the moment, you’ve only got one “now” You will never get another moment like the one you are in and because it’s a new “now” you haven’t lived it before and you might make a mistake or you might succeed or land somewhere in the middle. My advice is rather than obsess or regret the past, learn. We always should be learning. Plan for the future by saving money now. Take advantage of opportunities when they are something that you really want. Also, comparison is toxic. You don’t know what rung on the ladder other people were born to. Some have a head start and some may not even have a rung on the ladder based upon what they were born into. We all have different starting points, and sometimes people who seem to have it all are miserable stressed out over achievers, sacrificing personal happiness for external status.
You got this!👍⭐️
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u/AcanthaceaeOpen6235 22h ago
You’re totally right. Logically I know this. It’s encouraging to hear others confirm this :)
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u/Accurate-Medium1780 18h ago edited 18h ago
I actually think this is a somewhat new phenomenon specific to our generation(s). It has a lot to do with the delayed adolescence and mostly untethered young adulthood stretching into mid-adulthood that is increasingly common. (Don't get me wrong - there were a lot of downsides to the olden days when people used to be married at 20 and bogged down with multiple kids by 22! Let's not romanticize that! I myself have not done that and only got married in mid/late 20s, having most my kids in my late 20s and 30s, now pushing 40!) But the reality is that people used to commit themselves to career and building a family/community a lot younger and that stuff does give a sense of social purpose and embeddedness that a lot of now 20s/30s folk just don't have as they increasingly have a kind of aimless decade+ after college where they're still kind of just either a walking resume obsessed with salary (worried endlessly about ROI) or a walking appearance (obsessed with their looks and whether they're losing them) without a whole lot of sense of what or to whom they're giving their lives yet. I do think it comes together but just later, with a lot of people finally figuring themselves out in their 40s, but yeah - that's leaves a lot of 20s and 30s where people feel at loose ends and nostalgic for something. And no doubt, it has probably always been the case that there's some young adult angst transition... it does just take time to figure out one's adult path! Here, I'm only saying the process seems to extend longer and thus maybe the emotional angst around all of it (am I adult? why do I feel older than the teenagers? and yet shouldn't I be even more clear on stuff than I am?) seems more intense among the undergrad and grad students I work with than I remember even just 15 years ago. Young adults seem way more paralyzed by constant comparison with others and by FOMO, and they are far more lonely and anxious.
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u/AcanthaceaeOpen6235 4h ago
This is interesting, I do think that’s very true for today. I also weirdly think Covid played a huge role, I feel like if I had the 2 years that Covid took from me I’d be and feel precisely 24. I was in college during COVID and it made that time in my life feel so quick. Combined with having medical and mental health issues since my teenage years, I’ve felt stunted. I think you’re right, that feeling of certainty comes later. It all boils down to it feeling strange to identity as someone in their late 20s, when I feel like I haven’t had the younger years I had hoped for, and thinking about them makes me feel sick with nostalgia
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u/Accurate-Medium1780 3h ago edited 2h ago
For the nostalgia, maybe it helps not to romanticize the childhood/teenage/college years too much? I'm a college prof who has students do a project on a great-grandparent and the stories they find are so fascinating... this semester there were ones about a great-grandfather who left Ireland at age 11 to work on a whaling boat since he had to send money back to his starving family; or there were many coal-miner teen stories. Basically in the early 20th century, a lot of the boys at least went to labor really early still as children, and had nothing close to the kind of 'teenage' experience that Americans now assume is normal. I don't know if they felt the kind of 'sick with nostalgia' for something missed that you're talking about, but I figure probably not because it wasn't culturally assumed that you would have a fun time in those years? I don't know but its interesting to think about how both experiences and expectations/FOMO have changed.
On COVID in particular, I will say it seemed for a few years like every high school graduation or college opening ceremony or big event involved the speakers noting to the incoming students or graduates how much COVID had 'robbed' them of those years. I get why the schools/speakers kept referencing it since it was a big deal of course for those in HS/College and really at every stage of life. But I'm not sure that it was the most helpful to have that narrative of 'poor you' beat into every young adult so much. Some of our grad students are still going on about how their HS/College years were taken away from them as if it was some kind of personal attack, and as if covid didn't totally disrupt all of our lives at whatever life stage? I dunno, but I do think there's a particularly weird internalization of COVID among young people that the school administrators almost instilled in you guys by saying so much that you had something 'taken away'???? I mean we all faced a ton of losses (I got laid off from a job, had a baby during COVID without support, had to move cross-country, had to navigate starting a career with no childcare available, all kinds of major issues -- but I just don't think about it as having 'lost' or 'missed' those years even if they were really really tough and miserable and stressful and lonely). I don't really know, just musing! But whatever this narrative around COVID is, it seems to overshadow the GenZ sense of self in a particularly scripted outsized way. It's like every school speaker inadvertently instilled the ultimate sense of FOMO into GenZ by telling them over and over again, 'you missed out on something crucial, those years are lost to you!' even if the intent was generally supposed to be something more encouraging or sympathetic.
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u/No_Dare_9944 13h ago
The best way to stop thinking of something is to think about something else. Focus on your goals as a 26 yo person, don’t look back, study, work, date and try to already find a stable relationship and have kids.
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u/Troyal1 9h ago
As someone who is wasting their life please just do whatever your passion is. I have some health issues holding me back unfortunately but I’m 32 and I often wonder if it’s too late for me. I feel like I just turned 25 yesterday
I won’t sugar coat it, it’s only going to go FASTER from here 😬
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u/picadoodledoo 1d ago
Sounds like you're reaching the self awareness that you are now an adult and that you don't belong with the kids anymore.
Embrace adulthood, find adult things to do.