Quote:
Originally Posted by Ryz25
Society moves faster than ever these days. I'm current early 30s, and I've spent my entire life battling my mental health. I wasn't officially diagnosed with PTSD until I was 27. I was never able to go to college. I never held a job for more than a year. I've never had a relationship, and friendships don't last.
More and more, I feel left behind. I feel like the leftover garbage of society. I try not to feel this way, but it's hard not to when the western world is structured for standardization. Prepared for college. Go to college. Get a career. Buy a house. Build equity. Save for retirement. Get married. Have kids. Et cetera.
What of those who don't fit? Many of us don't, and it's like we're tossed the leftovers from their tables. Like we're fed the scraps of their success in a empty, token gesture of appeasement. I am tired of being told that I should feel happy with my situation. Happy? Barely making enough to support myself? Treated like I'm somehow subhuman?
I feel inadequate because modern society deems that I am. How can I keep up? How can I stay competitive? Or will be a single, renting, old man, who drops dead at 80 while on the clock? What hope is there? These are legitimate questions that I ask myself. I want to get married. I want to own a home. I want to save for retirement. I want stability and consistency. But no matter how hard I work, I'm always too far behind.
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"Millennials" are the first generation in the US who are, on average, not doing 'better' than their parents.
I've noticed our peers beginning to resent the high expectations and double-standards placed on us after decades of exploitative financial and social policy. Even if you 'did everything right', it is still unlikely you'd have a house, family, equity, etc without being massively indebted and still living paycheck to paycheck, dealing with the high stress of long work hours in a dual income household. Regardless of background, we are bound to feel left behind, inadequate, and see a bleak future ahead as we only grow older and still do not see prosperity on the horizon.
So, what if you don't fit? What peace is there in chasing promises of a broken system? Perhaps being left behind gives us the freedom to take a different path.
That appears to be a 'lesson' for our generation; to stop conforming to rules about how we're supposed live that do not serve our well being, and instead make our own; however uncomfortable and unfair that call might be. It starts with believing that we have a right to change things if they don't work, even if we make mistakes, and that we don't need to be perfect in order to live a fulfilling life. We've been vulnerable to viewing failure as a personal shortcoming instead of questioning the social, economic, or political design that makes failure so unacceptable in the first place. It should be obvious when such a vast number of people are struggling with the exact same issue, the problem is not at the individual level.
You say you don't see where there is hope. I don't know where to find that yet, either. Maybe it is enough for now that many of us are struggling over it, and together we can find a better way.
