As the target demographic, when “Girls” finally premiered this month, I experienced the thrill usually reserved for kids about to be launched into roller coaster oblivion after an epic line.

Lena Dunham nailed the quarter-life crisis: when your college hopes and dreams turn out to be, yeah, those. Watching Hannah Horvath stumble through life in 20-something limbo forgave me for awkwardly flunking high heels and having an apartment with a 16-degree floor slant. But as Hannah started becoming candy-store date-with-book-editor successful, I was scared she was changing into her way less relatable creator. I was losing my fellow woman-child.

The very first episode of “Girls” made me misjudge Hannah as another privileged drama queen. But then Lena Dunham worked her magic on me. Unlike other shows that tried to speak to bygone it-girls in their twenties, “Girls” seemed like it was smuggled from reality. Hannah was an underemployed recent graduate who I, as an almost successful journalist, recognized. An aspiring writer who thought a trash bag was an acceptable substitute for a suitcase; Hannah was stalled in a perpetual adolescence.

Like Lena Dunham, I was born in 1986 and grew up in New York except I hadn’t gotten around to her $3.7 million Random House book deal. Also, while she accepts big-deal trophies for being an actor, writer, and producer in a sequined gown, there’s still no award for being a triple threat 20-something with an uncanny ability to break Ikea furniture, ruin perfectly fine groceries and wear ill-fitting shorteralls unironically.

I may have first identified with Hannah, but Lena’s off screen antics were endearing too. (Even if she was wildly successful.) Ms. Dunham’s VOGUE cover may be Photoshopped, but her oversharing Instagram account offered the opposite: candid pictures of herself in unsexy pajamas; fans sent her tweets broadcasting their binge eating. At the Golden Globes, Lena tilted her chin and pursed her lips for photographers, but playing that part made her break into laughs. I imagined she was the only one there down to earth enough to split a breakfast ice cream sandwich with me. Then she would stroke my messy bun and conclude that the time my former crush acknowledged I existed, it really meant something. After that, she’d assure me his new actress girlfriend’s forty headshots were all just good angles.

I laughed deep belly laughs when she poked fun at y-generation self-indulgence,

“We're not going to talk about my book,” Hannah unapologetically says to her crying friend. “This isn't the appropriate time to discuss my incredibly exciting professional endeavor.”

On the most recent episode, Marnie threw Hannah a birthday party at a Brooklyn dive bar that was a carbon copy of ones I’ve gotten too drunk at. I winced when Marnie forced Hannah into a humiliating Rent duet they once sung in college. Still, I understood her desire to relive a time when she felt like a star. In putting the fragile egos of these four infantilized women on display, “Girls” was bracingly realistic. Lena’s nudity remains the subject of controversy, but that’s nothing compared to how bold she is when she lays herself emotionally bare. In the Season 2 finale, Hannah panics because she can’t make her deadline and gives herself a haircut that makes her look like le Petit Prince. This season, Jessa rolls her eyes at group therapy, unwilling to face her pain. I still had hope that Hannah, Shoshanna, Marnie and Jessa would squirm in big girl clothes for awhile, until they, and I, slowly grew up. Even if Patti Mayonnaise was still my style icon. Covered in tattoos of children’s book illustrations, Hannah proclaims,

“I’ve marched to the beat of my own drummer ever since I made my camp shirt into a halter top.”

I had my own version of regression. The show used to make me feel less pathetic for wanting to sit on Santa’s lap longer than the average 27-year-old.

My post college anti-climax was a productive time in spite of the text messages from my dentist reminding me to protect my beautiful smile. Imagine how I’d sparkle if I had dental insurance. I stalked photos of myself on Facebook from college to pretend I was still as shiny as I used to be. The forgiving web site let me cross into an alternate universe when I didn’t have dark circles that looked like football greasepaint. I seemed carefree. That was the time, Hannah told Shoshanna, when your only job was to be yourself.

At her lowest point, Hannah asks her junkie roommate, “you know when you’re young and you drop a glass and your dad says get out of the way so you can be safe while he cleans it up? Well now no one really cares if I clean it up myself.” Watching that after my dad died made me sympathize with her, and I confessed to feeling that way more than once. (I break glasses like twice a week so you do the math.) Hannah was unapologetically obsessed with herself, but it all registered with a bittersweet hint of melancholy. Her vulnerability made me feel better about feeling lost – until she cashed an advance for her e-book.

Since the show’s start, time treadmilling underneath me as it has, I found myself on the other side of my twenties. When Shoshanna tells her friends it’s amazing how little they’ve accomplished in four years, it hit a nerve. Hannah snaps back. “Four years is like nothing.” Deluded maybe, but it made me think that Hannah surpassing me at 25 wasn’t scary. It was inspiring. Besides, I was born in December of 1986, which is basically the 90s.

Now that Hannah’s been out of school for as long as I have, she’s still a hot mess, but a hot mess with a book deal. And we all know what Lena’s up to. So it’s time for me to catch up or I could just give myself a haircut.