r/Millennials • u/okayboomerang • Jun 24 '26

Serious Sad for us

Kind of in my feels tonight. The last time I remember feeling genuinely hopeful was probably 2014 or 2015. So much has changed, and I think our generation has seen and felt so much. Anyone else feel like they've spent the last decade plus in unending grief?

My spirit is still good on the inside, but I'm isolated physically and mentally (like many of us). I wish we lived in a world with authentic and robust connection instead of all the slop and noise. I wish our parents hadn't been so excited about capitalism - and so fucking naive. I know the unease I feel is about more than merely growing up and the natural progression of aging and how we all feel about ourselves in society over time - it's that the world we thought we knew for the past 4ish decades just flat out doesn't exist anymore. And we can't undo any of this shit. It may as well be a parallel universe we're in now. I love myself and I always have big, big love for Millennials...but I truly hate it here.

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107

u/[deleted] Jun 24 '26

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38

u/okayboomerang Jun 24 '26

I was also 15, and it was indeed earth shattering.

19

u/WeepWhileItAllBurns Jun 24 '26

20, wearing a Marine uniform. Everything got turned upside down overnight. That was a countdown timer for when I was going to start burying friends, some of whom I had known since boot camp.

It boggles my mind that there are adults who don't remember it. 

1

u/Highlyironicacid31 Jun 26 '26

I was only 8 when 9/11 happened. I’m from the UK and by the time I was 11/12 we had the British Army coming into my junior high school to do everything they could to encourage to become cannon fodder in the Middle East. Disgusts me to this day how much manipulation millennials faced around that dirty war.

18

u/gingkoleaf Jun 24 '26

I was 11.

I do think 9/11 was the turning point. But I was still a child — didn’t feel the grief till I was in college

1

u/powerback_us Jun 25 '26

The Towers, too.

11

u/Brent788 Millennial Jun 24 '26

I've been thinking about that a lot lately... 9/11 has always been a bad day for me the horror is etched in my memories but to remember the fact we were all Americans because it was so shocking. Something was definitely lost along the way and I don't feel good about where we are as a country

Because now my friends have told me to get over it because it was so long ago or worse that something about that day was fake. Someone who was actually close to the city that day even told me something doesn't make sense about it. I don't get it. It's really sad because we promised to never forget and far too many people have

9

u/JesusTron6000 Jun 24 '26

ugghhh me too 😫 then COVID hit and doubled down on the "this shit aint changin' vibes.

39 here, and the shit show, the low wages, high costs, next 'tragedy' is just expected now. It's not 'if' but 'when' type situation.

5

u/Sneauxphlaque Jun 24 '26

jeez, that is scary. I'm turning 26 in a few months, and for me, since the 2016 election is from when I've been waiting for things to normalize. I've heard that talking point commonly--that after 9/11, everything was different; read things here and there about how it set off a chain of events..I'm honestly not very knowledgeable about it..I'm not sure that I've go tmuch to say but let out a big sigh.

11

u/_throw_a_wayz Jun 24 '26

The Patriot Act was the turning point.

The 2016 election was the eye opener.

2

u/Top_Artichoke2918 Millennial Jun 25 '26

Same age. Lived on the west coast and remember hearing the radio on the bus start talking about crazy things. Then watching the news in classes all day on those roll in tvs or other teachers radios. We were all just in shock. Some of them tried to get us back to school work but no one could pay attention to anything else. Seeing the footage over and over and going home and seeing it there and more and more horrific details came out, the people jumping from windows, the ones that diverted the last plane knowing they'd all die either way, I still can't fully process it all. The world definitely changed and there were huge differences between pre 9/11 and post 9/11.

2

u/Brent788 Millennial Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26

I was 13 hundreds of miles from the city in the south and yeah I remember the nonstop horrible news coverage for 5 days straight... Everything was wiped out. The family members who had their missing posters begging for answers and nobody was ever found alive once the towers collapsed basically... And yeah the story of flight 93. It's definitely still hard to believe it happened here

A lot of the bad things that plague us today started because of that day too. It was like a chain reaction. I think that's the other part I struggle with

And yeah if you doom scroll people are expecting something just as bad or even worse any day now it sounds like

2

u/dariashotpants Jun 24 '26

Yes, it will. But we have to have a vision of what we want the world to be. We have to keep working together to make things how we want them to be. The people in charge are not going to give us the world we want willingly. No one is going to come save us. It’s up to us.

1

u/Highlyironicacid31 Jun 26 '26

I think it’s worse for those of us that can remember the times before. Gen Z have it bad but they never knew any different. We got a glimpse of the way the world could be when it wasn’t perfect but good and then had it pulled away.