An Ode to Who We Thought We’d Be
Dear Millenial
Replace that penthouse apartment you pictured at 12 with your 10 square metre room in your parent's basement, replace that shiny black Lexus you dreamed of at 14 with your mom’s “pre-loved” car, and replace that thought of marriage and 2.4 kids with a dog/cat/hamster and an ailing Tinder profile.
Forget everything you thought you would have by 26. Acquaint yourself with masked birthdays and New Year’s spent over video calls. Acquaint yourself with feelings of inadequacy. Acquaint yourself with the pain of who you’d thought you’d be by now. Acquaint yourself with the pain of what you thought you’d have.
It’s not like you didn’t try. Two degrees but no ones hiring. Relationships that started with a fiery Romeo and Juliet like passion but fizzled into nothing. Plans, ideas, and strategies to turn this all around that were ruined when a new virus decided it was finally time to introduce itself to the human population.
The ache is always slightly there, especially when you see the younger one's ageing and turning into who you used to be — a teenager so full of certainty and hope that things would work out for them, their only obstacle in life being their lack of freedom.
The pain is there when you browse through Instagram and see the slightly braggy pictures of those of our generation who things actually worked out for. But those are few and far between. When the odds are stacked against you as a collective, that’s when it’s time to unite. Unite in your pain, it will help you realise its normality. Unite in your loss it will help you realise the struggle is not yours alone, and unite in your freedom — after all, it’s the one thing you all seem to still have. The one thing you yearned for years ago.
Replace that constant sense of dread with the knowledge that tomorrow, regardless of which one, things will be better.
Love, Ross Lynn.
