27 (2023)

directed by Flóra Anna Buda

Natalie Vaval

For the past year and a half, I’ve been telling myself, and others, that I am the happiest I’ve ever been. Toward the end of 2023, I made the executive decision at 24 to quit my long-term retail job to fully dedicate myself to my journalism career, officially freeing myself from the shackles of self-induced burnout sprung from my own inability to find equilibrium in the early stages of post-grad life.

In 2021, leading up to my graduation in a post-quarantine era, I was running on overdrive to try and mentally brace myself for this next phase of life. In juggling various projects, working part-time, securing an internship at a publication I loved, and processing the fallout of my relationship—while on the surface I felt like I was doing everything right—I didn’t realize just how much of a toll this was all taking on me.

Midway through my final semester, I got a call from my favorite professor who was checking in on my progress. Our conversation started out smoothly as I constantly assured her that I was fine, until I realized that I’d begun sobbing. Taking heed of the direction I was going, my professor comforted me as I tearfully expressed embarrassment and spitefulness over my lack of composure and incapacity to maintain control with an unyielding grip.

“I don’t want you to crash,” she said. “Stop, breathe, and slow down.” For the remainder of my final semester, I took her advice and loosened my own reins just enough to lessen the impending blow.

Once I’d graduated and my internship ended, with her words still lingering in the back of my mind, I decided to implement a celebratory three-month break for the summer to recoup with the intention to emerge anew, ready to jumpstart my career.

Up until this point, my life had been spent running on the cog of routine, masking itself under the safety net of “stability,” a concept I’ve been conditioned to crave from a young age. Suppressing the mental strain that’d been fermenting, until then, every controlled strategic move I made to ensure that stability was guaranteed had worked. Though at first I seemed excited to finally sit in the driver’s seat of my life, without respite my anxiety began to hyperfixate on the monumental loss of structure that had unfathomably guided my every move.

As a result I crashed so hard that I couldn’t bring myself to think, breathe, or operate creatively. I never took that three-month break like I’d planned; frankly, at the time, I don’t think I would’ve known how. Instead I found solace in what felt like the last mirage of post-grad structure I had left; once again I was stable but stagnant.

When Flóra Anna Buda’s animated short 27 found me, I had just celebrated my 26th birthday a little over a week prior. Internally feeling the urgency to sacrifice the conscious path I’d chosen to resubmit myself to a more steady existence, on the surface I wishfully maintained optimism over what lay ahead.

In 27, we first meet Alice sprawled out, half-dressed, and slightly bruised from what appears to be a bike crash atop a majestic hill as she’s approached by two cops whom she seduces to evade punishment for her apparent recklessness. As her fantasy reaches its climax, the abrupt sound of her little brother, peeking through and catching her in the act of self-pleasure, kills the moment. Stewing in her discontent, she lays back staring blankly at the ceiling as the news of young adults increasingly struggling to afford housing and moving back home is being reported on the radio.

Sitting across from her brother at the table, a cake with freshly blown-out candles rests beside her. Today is Alice’s 27th birthday, but that is not cause for celebration. Studying the confines of her family’s stuffy apartment, her exasperation worsens as the crescendo of her brother’s taunts—“Alice is a loser! Alice is a loser!”—cause her to snap.

In need of an escape, she turns to friends and any vice she can acquire for comfort. For a brief moment the world stands still as Alice dances her worries away in drug-induced ecstasy. Unfortunately her insatiable dread begins to eat away at her brief euphoria.

Still attempting to evade the feeling, Alice crashes in the middle of an empty street, with the hallucinations of her sexual fantasy reemerging. While finally able to feel satiated, her authoritative lovers still uphold their responsibilities and punish her anyway.

“Please don’t call my parents,” Alice pleads as a condescending laugh escapes her lovers’ mouths. Feeling a wave of embarrassment engulf her, she breaks down in tears before coming to her senses. Even in the comfort of her dreams, the escape of her neverending angst is not afforded to her.

After a long night, Alice arrives home no longer wanting to dwell on her sadness. Tossing her tattered clothes aside, she turns on her radio and vivaciously dances to escape her anxieties once more before the screen cuts to black.

As the credits rolled, I sat in silence, viscerally uneasy, as my mind began to spiral. Though I had 356 days until 27 came for me, it had felt like enough time had passed to harp on everything I still needed to accomplish before then; or better yet, before I turned into Alice.

I began to pick Alice apart in my mind. For a split second, I felt gratification and superiority over her, thanks to my supposed master plan to achieve success before turning 27, before confessing my own hypocrisy in refusing to acknowledge how I’d been actively self-soothing, like her, the entire month prior as I eased into turning 26.

Not once do we get insight into how Alice's circumstances came to be. Did she recently get laid off? Has she been actively applying to jobs for months on end to no avail? Or is she also re-navigating what she wants to do with her life? Irrespective, I asked myself why I chose to ignore the resonance we shared.

Like Alice, I am in my mid-20s, still living at home, and was (by that point) unsuccessful in my attempts to secure any writing opportunities I’d spent the last year and a half aspiring toward. If anyone should empathize with her on the suffocating nature of processing early adulthood in the confines of your childhood home, or the necessary urge to spare no expense to best your anxieties, it’s me.

Yet, despite having spent months watching similar films with similar themes of young adult growing pains (all as a means to escape my own, mind you), I still chose to resent her. Why couldn’t I extend the same grace to Alice, like I claimed to finally give myself?

Looking for answers, I remembered that the week before my birthday I took myself on a date to see the 20th anniversary re-release of Pride & Prejudice. Upon reflection, I recalled the familiar words of Charlotte Lucas, aka Elizabeth Bennett’s best friend, after being questioned about her hasty marriage to Mr. Collins. She famously exclaims, “I’m 27 years old. I’ve no money and no prospects. I’m already a burden to my parents. And I’m frightened.”

For most of my late teens and early 20s, that quote has notoriously lived in the recesses of my mind, only coming out when I would come across #relatable social media posts of girls playfully checking off all the ways they relate to Charlotte on their birthday cakes. It was easy to laugh when 27 was light years away, and even easier when you assumed you’d be much further ahead.

In many ways, this is why I was deliriously optimistic about restarting at 24. The combination of my youth, the luxury of my parents’ support, and the security of having insurance for a little while longer, alleviated my weariness as I nosedived into unfamiliar waters.

Yet here I am at 26, feeling exactly how Alice’s brother described her: a loser! But even then, I still stand firmly on what I have continued to tell anyone who will voluntarily listen, that I am the happiest I’ve ever been.

When I look back on the person I was at 22, I see a girl who was exhausted as she coasted through life, unable to shake her people-pleasing habits, while her inner voice grew more ravenous with the desire to bounce back creatively to no resolution. Regardless of the degree of success, I feel confident that my 22-year-old self would revel in the fact that I was actively pursuing my goals on my own terms, fulfilling the wish she’d distinctly set. I guess you could say I’m finally making up for lost time.

After my initial derogatory reaction, I didn’t think I’d be able to rewatch 27 anytime soon. However, in refreshing my memory for this essay, my heart had softened significantly towards Alice and in turn, myself. I regained understanding of the joys of escapism and reminded myself why I’d sacrificed an illusion of stability to make way for one of my choosing.

At the start of the year, I told my friends that I've entered “My year of YES!” with the intention of embracing life’s whimsicalities, putting myself out there more, and continuing to make intentional strides toward personal growth. I don’t know how the rest of my 26th year will pan out, but for now I’m done trying to rule the unknowns of life with an ironclad grip when I could be spending my 24 hours doing the best I can and making the most of life’s pleasures.

I don’t know how Alice will spend the remainder of her 24 hours or her 27th year. Maybe she’ll still be dancing her anxieties away or maybe she’ll buck up and do the best she can to strive for more. Either way, I hope Alice continues to unapologetically move on her own terms. Even on my worst days, I will do everything in my power to do the same.

Natalie Vaval is a Haitian-Salvadoran writer and pop culture enthusiast born and based in New York. Her work explores the intersections of entertainment, identity, and culture (amongst other things) as it impacts marginalized communities – especially within the Black and Latinx diaspora. If nothing else, she’s most likely spending her downtime rewatching Bob’s Burgers for the umpteenth time (please rave about it with her). You can read her past work at natalievaval.com.