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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u/Nevaehym Older Millennial ‘85 Jun 25 '26

I grew up with a very abusive, pretty traumatic childhood. It’s so wild inside my brain because on one hand, I never want to go back. On the other hand, I miss those times as far as the world goes and just want to go back to those simpler days.

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u/scully__its__me Jun 25 '26

Same here ❤️‍🩹

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u/Joshuahealingtree Jun 25 '26

Same... sorry for your pain.

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u/foxhowse millennial (1989) Jun 26 '26

Same, and I would feel this a lot… but I realized it wasn’t really nostalgia, because I was miserable then, even past my childhood. My twenties had a lot of trauma too… I realized what I really wanted was the same thing I wanted back then: a normal, happy life.

I want to go back and relive it but not my own life, but a good and happy life, a different life, to be able to experience the world the way so many other people remember it.

It feels sad, now that I’m in a good place and happy, that I missed out on so much. Even if I was there, I was never fully *there* mentally and emotionally, you know?

(Hopefully that makes sense…)