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I am twenty-six. Turning twenty-seven in a few more months.

In a few more months, I'd no longer be in my mid-twenties. I'd be going up another notch to my late twenties. What have I done to deserve this? All this life. All these years. What have I done to deserve them all?

For a while there, at least for a year or so, I was able to distract myself from myself. For a while, I forgot to look at my face in the mirror and see myself. But I'm back to staring at the mirror. And it hasn't gone away. My sadness remains. I'm starting to think it never does go away. I seem to have had it forever. It comes and it goes, like a pesky colds virus. It's just there. And there's no real cure for it. The best you can hope for is to take something that would let it hibernate til the next rain. Or the next burning heat. Or the next cold wind.

And a cold wind rises from depths of my history. And I feel another sneeze coming, so I hold my nose. But the pressure only continues to build up inside me.

I am twenty-six, for the next few months. I don't think I've deserved it.

What does it mean to be twenty-six? I have my ideas...but that's all they are. Born of hundreds of hours of television, film, and pages and pages of literary frill. I am twenty-six in theory. Not in reality.

What does it take to be twenty-six?

Success? Security? Family? Fame? Fortune? Independence? Contentment?

It's hard to say if I've achieved success yet... Security is relative... Everybody has family (or at least was born into one)... No fame. Never had material wealth. Independence? What is that? Contentment...

Sometimes, I think I am...content. Is that enough?

I guess if I have to ask, it probably isn't. So what do I have? What am I? I am back to where I started. With my sadness, to begin with. With my sadness to throw all my questions back at me.

I am twenty-six. What have I done to deserve this?