OH HEY WORST NEWS EVER DAY. Supposedly Girls, the show that, if we're honest had a huge massive hand in getting The Debrief off the ground (thnks bbs) and played a major role in reigniting the feminist agenda amongst millenial women, is coming to an end.
Yep, according to E! Online (your number one source for always trustworthy news), sources (those guys again) say that Season Six of Girls is set to be the last one. This shouldn't come as too much of a shock to super fans - both Lena and co-creater Jenni Konner have been vocal in saying that they were cautious of the show going on too long.
This next season is season five which means that, if the rumours are true, the *next *next season will be the last - making Lena and co. 30-years-old at the finale (except Shoshanna obvs).
This for me, is worrying. I'm the same age as Hannah Horvath - I was 24 when Girls started and, next year when it finishes I will be (gulp) 30 - but don't tell anyone. And, if all the Girls girls have got their life sorted by the end of the show as is customary when a show comes to an end then shouldn't I, as someone who's used the show as my personal guide-me-through-my-20s bible also have my life together?
The big 3-0 sticks out in women's minds as a benchmark - the time when you're meant to have got married, have a house, got your career sorted, have kids and a dog and be reading grown-up lady websites and magazines about what it's like to try and concieve using IVF. The trouble is, in today's unrealistic economic climate, almost none of us will have 'achieved' these supposed life goals in the allotted amount of acceptable time.
I, for starters, have only just moved in with a real life boy - and two other people. Our house is a shit tip. I roll out of bed ten minutes before I need to leave the house in the morning and haven't cooked a meal at home in yonks. I wouldn't consider myself grown up enough to raise a gerbil, let alone a baby. Basically, nothing has changed *since *I was 24.
When Girls came along back in 2009, I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Contrary to what the lady magazines were telling me, the fact that I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life was OK because the world as I knew it had changed spectacularly in the time since I'd entered university. The fact that I still went moping to my parents at the end of the month for money wasn't a big deal - I was doing work experience. The fact that my 'biological clock was ticking' didn't matter a bloody bit due to the fact that I living a wildly child-unfriendly life and, as Girls reassured me, at 24, I was still a child, a teeny tiny child playing grown up in a flat I couldn't afford dreaming of a life that seemed further and further away every day.
The way I've been getting round my ever-nearing 30th birthday (October BTW, cards and presents welcome) in my mind is telling everyone I can get to listen that women need to drop '30' as a life marker because all it's doing is making us feel bad. I know 35-year-olds that still live in warehouse flats (with six other guys), 37-year-olds who've gone back to university and even 41-year-olds who work at a shop to fund their band that's 'going to make it any day now'.
With the average age to get married being 32, half of us still living at home and the average London house price being over £500,000 - the economic climate means we literally can't replicate our parents' lives who, by the time they were your age, had a mortgage, kids and a dog. Today, even David Cameron said he's worried (lol) that his kids won't be able to afford houses and, with more and more people doing MAs thanks to shoddy employment opportunities, our expectations of what should be 'achieved' by a certain age should be moving further and further back.
So, with Lena Dunham ending the show at age 30 - I'm a little bit scared. Hannah Horvath opens the first epsiode of the first season claiming she wants to be 'the voice of a generation' and, unsuprisingly, that's what Lena Dunham herself has become. For the past five years she, and the show, have been my go to on how to act and think about situations I'm unsure of and my reassurance when I'm concerned my life isn't turning out the way it should. I want the characters of the show to end up in a happily cathartic place - except I don't - because that's not real life - something Girls has always been so good at showing.
Knowing Lena Dunham to be a very safe pair of hands, I'm sure my worries will be unfounded. I'm sure the show's finale won't end with the Girls girls stepping aboard the good ship Adulthood clutching pregnancy tests and wedding bans, waving farewell to their tumultuous twenties - that would be disastrous. What I will need now though, is a new show - one to tell me that nope, I'm still not a grown up and yes, eating a whole packet of cheese puffs is an acceptable way to spend a Sunday afternoon. Anyone out there up for writing one? I'll pay in cut-price gin and a Netflix gift card - which is pretty much all I can afford.
Roll on 30.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.