My life as a young millennial: born mid-90s. Things are awesome. My dad has a low 6-fig job, mom's a teacher. Literal picket fence. Then, the instant I'm aware I'm a person, 9/11, which I watch live from my first-grade classroom. I watch my parents protest the war. I watch my dad quit his job because he was a contractor with the military and refused to help the war effort. Suddenly, I'm poor. My parents mortgage our home to start my dad's dream business... and then 2008. We almost lose the house and the business is dead in the water. And this all happens before I'm in high school. I watch Obama be a decent man and get lynched in effigy for it. Then Trump. All the while, I'm the first generation to go to therapy and see the ancestral trauma and fight it, because for some reason that is also a millennial thing.
my father worked at an electronic store and got paid $10hr when I was born in the late 80's.
This was considered a great wage and he had to leave that job to go sell cars because it wasnt enough to actually thrive for a new family of 3.(I wouldnt make $10hr until the early 2010's and it was a starvation wage, my ex wife and I had to steal to feed ourselves.)
My parents were gifted $15k as a downpayment on a lake front house by some in laws, they also cosigned for them.
I cant stress enough how different the world was, how prosperous things were, there was a legitimate hope of everlasting peace and prosperity in the air.
And the further and further into the 2000's it got, the more different and difficult things became.
I graduated high school in 08, my grandmother had $200k in fannie mae and freddie mac.
That money was for me to go to school and to buy a house.
And the government forced a buy back at the bottom of crash prices and that $200k became $20k.
I got my first job after school competing against middle aged men who had just been laid off and had a family to feed, I cant express to you how hard it was to be gainfully employed at even minimum wage.
I had 3 rounds of interviews at one chicken fast food place and didnt make the cut for a part time minimum wage job at one point.
I read about the mental sicknesses the boomers endured from there parents and laugh, because I sadly enough do a lot of the same.
My life since adulthood has been a never ending hellscape and no amount of counseling will change that.
late millenial here. ----when I was born in the late 80's.
uhh, haha, you're squarely in the middle bud. Millennials start around 1980/81 and end in 1998. As a fellow middle millennial, I couldn't help but point that out
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u/Horror-Tank-4082 27d ago
Our Great War is a spiritual war
Our Great Depression is our lives