Goodbye Twenties
let's do therapy together!
I wrote a version of this post and then I read Anne Helen Peterson’s essay “How Millennials Grew Up and Got Old.” So I obviously had to make a few tweaks (and you should go read her essay). While I do think that having your entire identity based around when you were born is a tad silly, there is a reason we have these (admittedly quite arbitrary) generational windows. There is still something, maybe not everything, to growing up in a certain time and place. A lot of narratives, at least in English-speaking media, about my generation — the Millennials if that wasn’t clear — is very US-centric. That’s what Peterson’s essay reminded me of. It seems like the entire origin story of my generation revolves around the 2008 crash. Before then we were just some nebulous “Generation Y” that was the placeholder for young people coming of age in the post-9/11 world. But with ‘08, we became something. The story of a lost generation, unable to have the same material wealth as their parents, hampered by a terrible economy that killed career prospects and thus “normal” life advancement. A tale of being told we could be anything we wanted to be only for that to be ripped from under us. A generation of radicalism galvanized by the recession into Occupy Wall Street. A cohort of people in college or about to start college, unsure of how they’ll be able to survive afterwards with mountains of debt.
But, this wasn’t my experience. In Canada, there was a recession, but it was never as severe as in the US or parts of Europe. Growth remained strong after a momentary blip in Alberta, and the economy soared with the last great oil boom in the early 2010s while most of the US was still recovering. The narrative of no white-collar jobs at the end of a degree to pay off gargantuan debt didn’t ring true either. Alberta had jobs and while post-secondary is still expensive, it’s nowhere near as crushing as your average American university. Compared to Vancouver and Toronto, Alberta was cheap and many Millennials did in fact find their way into home ownership.
And yet, this isn’t even the main reason that the stereotypical Millennial narrative doesn’t fully fit me. The principle reason is that I was literally starting high school in the middle of the financial crash. Pop culture and think-pieces viewed the Millennial in 2010 as more 23 than 17. Young, but adult nevertheless. The vibe was more indie sleaze or casual it-girl MySpace photos by Rosie Huntington-Whitely. By the time I’d graduated high school, in 2011, and became an adult, Alberta was already building up to that final economic ecstasy.
Things are different now, though. It feels like there are a lot more narratives in pop culture and media about people my age now than, say, 10 years ago. Lots of stuff about the Millennials-at-30 (or in their early 30s) and that experience being portrayed in film, television, and music. A decade ago, it didn’t feel like there was much about the experience of Millennials-at-20 (or younger), just in their 20s, in that general malaise of “what’s next” post-grad in a crumbling economy. Basically, the popular imagination of Millennials was Girls and even when media talked about people my age, it was from the vantage of older Millennials portraying or speaking to their earlier experiences. It wasn’t like now with Gen Z, where you’ve got people like Olivia Rodrigo writing songs about getting her driver’s license in her late teens and being hailed as a Zoomer pop darling. But now, I’m seeing my life stage portrayed more as the collective imagining of the Millennial has shifted from a born-in-1987 median to a born-in-1992 median.
My generation was the Peter Pan Generation. So it makes sense that it took a while for the cultural consensus to realize that the bulk of Millennials were no longer young, 20-somethings galivanting through life like in Broad City. I wonder if this sudden onslaught of Millennials-at-30 content, which is shifted more to my actual age rather than a bit older as in the past, is to compensate for the movers and shakers not realizing sooner that my generation isn’t so young anymore. Who knows.
One of the more recent examples of Millennials-at-30 content is Miley Cyrus’ new single, “Used to Be Young.” The chorus goes a little something like this:
I know I used to be crazy
I know I used to be fun
You say I used to be wild
I say I used to be young
Nothing groundbreaking, I’ll admit. But it speaks to me because it’s from someone my age going through things similar to myself. Maybe it’s something about the way Miley sings it or the music video of her breaking down and mouthing those words while looking at her mother off-screen. Regardless, I just turned 30 myself and I’ve been looking back on my 20s remorsefully and regretfully.
In a more naive period of my early 20s, I nobly thought that I wasn’t going to live my life with regret. I thought that I was going to do whatever felt right and stick to that. I thought I would pursue my dreams. I thought and I thought. But I never did, so, I just accumulated regret. They say life never goes according to plan, but try telling that to an eager 20-year-old.
Ten years ago, my life was fairly empty. I had a menial retail job I hated and one real friend. I remember my 20th birthday being rather uneventful because it didn’t feel worth celebrating, despite the milestone. My dad and I got Fatburger, one of our former rituals, and he gave me a Helen Levitt book. He wondered if I wanted to do something else, but it was depressing to think about and easier to avoid spectacle. I didn’t want to remember how empty my life felt, and how there wasn’t really anybody to do anything with. If you don’t have people to celebrate with, why celebrate?
Despite this, I still had dreams. Endless dreams about other realities I could dwell in and hopefully somehow manifest into my reality. I sincerely thought that at some point these ideas of the future would become my present. I’d leave Edmonton behind, probably for Toronto. I’d become a well-regarded photographer, maybe eventually branch out into film, first as a cinematographer and then eventually as a director. I’d have exhibits in art museums someday or maybe I’d have books published of my work. Perhaps I’d even have a Wikipedia bio. I thought I had so much potential and I just needed to work towards that and the rest would fall into place, including other things, like getting friends and a real community. I still have a draft essay titled “All of the People I’ll Never Be” that deals with this and hopefully I have the creative energy to do it justice at some point.
Little did I know when I turned 20 that over the following year, I’d not only be manifesting, but self-actualizing a lot of these hopes. By my 21st birthday, I was, in the words of Janis Ian, getting “socialized,” while my Tumblr photography blog was reaching its zenith and I had just spent the summer in my first group exhibition and zine. Much less depressing than a year prior.
But that’s kind of where the progress ended. Well, maybe not exactly, but it certainly feels that way. By 23, I’d pivoted from artist to wannabe urban planner, and enrolled at the UofA. Which was really just a full-circle moment for me because that was my original intent as far back as 9th grade. However, I still wanted to pursue art and kept up with photography. Get you a girl who can do both, right? This meant that I wasn’t taking on the full course load most of the time so I had more time to dedicate to photography and other endeavours.
Accordingly, I only finished that god-awful degree in December of last year. 23 to 29, the bulk of my 20s, was spent on a university experience I only truly found enjoyment in for the first few months. A complete vortex that sucked my young adulthood in. The degree didn’t even end up being planning, but the much more nebulous human geography, because fuck stats.1 And also, fuck planning, if I’m being honest. Urban planning, as it exists on this continent today, boils down to helping municipalities accumulate more revenue via property tax because they’re so underfunded by other levels of government. In practice, this means planners aim for gentrification, exaggerating an already stratified society. While I’m fine with not pursuing planning and appreciate the more critical lens human geography often has, I now have a degree in something I constantly have to explain to people because nobody knows what human geography is. It’s exhausting and depending on how articulate I am on a particular day, I can be good or bad at explaining it. That, and the career path is much less clear for a geographer. I should’ve gone to NAIT or something, except NAIT is actual work, unlike university. University is just a slow burn of attrition, or at least it was for me.2
Being at uni felt like a relentless grift, backed by pointless-but-necessary textbooks, assignments, and credits — which all dissolved into one expensive piece of paper at the end. Within a year, I’d figured out just how much of it is bullshit, and subsequently reduced my effort significantly. And despite my efforts to the contrary, I only ever made 2 genuine friends in university. The go-getters at GAPSS3 never clicked with me. Except for that one guy who clung to me so hard I thought he was in love with me. God, that was awful to endure.
Dating wasn’t much better. I mean, I know, dating sucks, but still. My dating history feels particularly depressing. I really felt that when I went over said history outside Sargent Sundae this past spring with a new friend who’d asked. My first “relationship” was some strange, quasi-clandestine, on-and-off thing with someone who I wasn’t really into, and we only admitted that we were dating post-factum. Instead, I had a massive crush on a married friend. Actually, I had massive crushes on a couple of other friends too. One was straight and in Calgary and kind of an asshole, while the other was DTF but nothing else, which was no bueno for me back then, but he still messed with my feelings hard. Charli XCX voice: Gay rights!
Best friends weren’t off-limits, either. My closest friend from 2017 to 2021 was someone I had a royally fucked up relationship with. I think to outsiders people who didn’t know, it seemed like we were dating, and if I’m honest, our hangouts often felt like dates. But we never were. We had one great summer and spent the rest of our friendship trying to replicate that, or at least that’s how it feels in hindsight. I don’t think we actually knew what we were doing. But we were too toxic for each other to have any success at amelioration. There were so many crossed boundaries and so many failures to reconcile that, so it became beyond repair.
What happened in 2018 I’ve already talked about. But, for a quick overview, I met someone and fell hard. I met him through his partner. Mess. In Toronto. Messier. I almost moved to Toronto, in part to be close to him. Messiest. We probably would’ve made great friends, but the feelings (both ways) got in the way. The fallout from that relationship made me question my sanity, gave me the sharpest panic attacks of my life, and caused me to go on a sabbatical from school for my mental health.
Meanwhile, my other best friend, whom I’ve been friends with since 1999, moved to Korea. Not quite the same as moving to Vancouver, I’ll admit. We keep in touch, but as you can probably imagine, it’s not quite the same and we aren’t nearly as close as we used to be. Not only is the geography against us, we’ve also grown into different people.
Other friendships came and went, too. I spent so much of my 20s trying to fill my life with people to enjoy my time on this planet with and continuously came up empty. I would momentarily feel satisfied only for everything to crumble. I know in hindsight that much of this had to do with my BPD-related instability, but often times I was just not finding the right people. It’s hard to find the right people. I don’t know if I’ve ever found them. It’s rare for me to feel like I belong somewhere, let alone comfortable. There are only two friendships through my 20s where I felt a strong connection, with whom I felt wholly myself. Both ended badly. One was that 2018 Toronto story and the other was during my “socializing” 2014 era that ended with what’s the earliest BPD-style meltdown I can remember.
I recently came to the conclusion that I don’t really like people. They annoy me and make me anxious. I went through my 20s in pursuit of people to fill the emptiness I’ve long felt. I wanted my life enriched by a strong support system of people I really clicked with. Some might say that’s unhealthy, but I don’t know if it is in general. We naturally want to connect with others and share our lives with them. It’s an innately human thing and recent discourse tries to undo that by telling us that we need to be our own support and not rely on others. That’s unhealthy. There is somewhere between completely relying on somebody to be your everything and forcing yourself to be 100% self-sufficient. Regardless, my volatility and perhaps bad luck mean that finding community is not only difficult but also negative.
I still remember walking around Portland in 2015, texting a friend about how misanthropic I felt. I should’ve listened to that version of myself, but instead, I doubled down and spent the rest of my 20s seeking to fill the void in my life through the validation of others. That’s the unhealthy bit, not seeking community and support. And it was often artificial, anyway. If I’m being perfectly honest, looking back, it’s hard to discern just how much of my spending time with others was genuine enjoyment for the experience itself and how much of it was because I’d post about it online or bring it up in conversations with others and feel a vague sense of being popular.
I grew up being told how undesirable I am, by my friends, family, and peers, and felt like a social reject throughout my adolescence. I never had those normal teenage experiences and I still feel like something is missing because of that, even if I got to a lot of them eventually. I tried to compensate for being an outcast as a teen through my various endeavours at being social and liked, both in-person and online, as a young adult. The trauma of regularized bullying and debasement means that the circuitry in my brain created this intense desire to be somebody who wasn’t bullied and debased and was in fact, valid.4 I sought validity out via likability in artificial ways at times, trying to approximate popularity, but it only helped short term.
Social media’s addictive clout-chasing experience is particularly rotten for someone with this mental disposition. Naturally, clout became my raison d’etre because it allowed me to see just how liked I was, down to the numbers, and that was a proxy for community for a long time. Its external validation drove my life experience for so long and I’m still unhappy about how addicted to that world I became, despite my efforts this year to untether. Nowadays, I feel gross every time I open Instagram, even if it’s only for links to posts like this.
I was never good at clout, either. Had a bit of a knack for Tumblr, but even then, it wasn’t that amazing. By the time I switched to Instagram, the knack had left, and I felt worthless as a creative because I was algorithmically told so. I didn’t have the following, the comments, the likes — whatever metric you want, I didn’t have it. Yes, it’s superficial, but we’re indoctrinated into this system of turning ourselves into brands and clouting our way through life. Everything we do that gets posted online only cements the commodification of ourselves and the platforms are too addictive to quit for people like me. I know how unhealthy it is to expect others to validate me. It’s not wrong to want validation per se, but to rely and depend on it, day in and day out, is an expectation that can never be consistently fulfilled. I know chasing it leaves me unhappy. I’ve been trying to move away from this, but it’s so hard to not get sucked back in, after years of this pattern overwriting my neurology.
One of the shifts I’ve tried to make for my online life to be healthier was moving all of my postings to the relatively quiet Substack. However, I still struggle with external validation here. I sometimes catch myself obsessively refreshing my post stats after I post something here or on Memories of Geographies. I think about how most of the people who seemingly took an interest in my photography on Instagram haven’t shown the same interest here. Even though sharing updates and links to Substack posts is pretty much the only reason I still have an operable Instagram account, most of my traffic is just from people who get my e-mails. So I’m not totally sure why I’m allowing myself to suffer through the Instagram experience still. I know when I share something and people like or comment on Instagram, they’re usually only looking at the photos or the quotes from essays I’ve shared because platforms like it have smoothed the wrinkles in our brains and nobody has the bandwidth for much more. People on Substack don’t seem too keen to interact with me either, which feeds a negative feedback loop about how worthless and talentless and undesirable I am, just like Instagram and just like the people in junior high. Especially when Substack’s own propaganda is often about how nice, engaging, and almost effortless and better for one’s own mental health this platform is. Maybe it’s not the algorithms, but just me. And wasn’t the point of being here to get away from this anyway? I want to not care about this stuff but I do because of years of reinforcement of the same cycles. Substack still is, like any other social platform, a popularity contest for someone with my neurology. A friend of mine on here recently said that this website is the closest he’s seen to the blogging culture and community of the 2000s in recent times, but it seems this community has skipped over me. And it irks me in a way I wish it didn’t.
The irony is that I realize now that I don’t think fame (whether through online clout or dreams of “making it” as an artist) by any stretch would’ve done me any good. I’m sure it would’ve felt great at the time, but it would’ve eroded me further and left me more vulnerable to corruption and debasement. And yet still I get a twinge of melancholy over not achieving it, whether because my dreams remain insatiated or because I failed the addictive algos. I wanted to be something that would catch the attention of the people who’d misjudged me or hurt me and prove that I was of value. But every time I seek to build that, the Internet tells me I’m not. I know, looking back, that these habits of mine were never going to meaningfully give me a content life. Like, of course hanging out just to post online for wider validation isn’t going to give me the kind of genuine community I want.
It’s more complicated than that, though. I never exclusively hung out with people for superficial reasons. I always started by seeking a genuine connection. I used more clout-y ways of validation to seek fulfillment at times as a reaction to not having more genuine fulfillment. And other problems got in the way of me being able to find my community, including social anxiety, BPD, trauma, and plain shit luck. There were and are a plethora of cards stacked against me.
If that isn’t bleak enough for you, what little I had going for me was ruined by the pandemic. Covid destroyed me. I still look back at who I was in 2019 with envy. As much as so much was wrong, I was more alive then than I am now. I had some sort of community, even if I didn’t feel that connected to it. I did more with my time and had more fun than I do now. I laughed more.
On New Year’s Eve 2019, I remember thinking about how this impending decade was where I would stare down the end of my 20s, feeling anxiety about turning the age I just did. Little did I know that I’d be robbed of my late 20s within a few months! Now, I don’t have the energy to have the life I had. And I don’t think there’s objectively anything wrong with that, but I wish I had a smoother transition to this point. There’s so much I never got up to, and now I likely never will, even if technically I still can. Unlike Miley, I never used to be wild.
The covid era has felt like a protracted downward spiral. I’ve regressed so much in so many ways that I didn’t think possible 3.5 years ago. The anxiety I spent a decade chipping away at broke through and resumed its natural seat in my brain. School going online was the death knell for any lingering motivation I had for academia. I also lost a lot of friends, which happened throughout my 20s, but with social distancing, I was no longer meeting new people, so my circle only shrunk. It’s still much smaller than pre-covid. Because I was much more concerned about catching covid than many were, I wouldn’t hang out as much and inevitably gulfs grew in relationships. Plus I lived in Winnipeg for a year, when nothing was happening (so no hanging out, meeting new people), and never saw my Edmonton friends, as they carried on with their lives. Nowadays, I have friends, unlike at 20, but not really any close ones that I see regularly, also unlike at 20. My closest friend is someone I haven’t hung out with in person since 2017.
Altogether, this has made my social levels depress heavily. As I stopped interacting regularly with people, my social anxiety crept up again in ways I hadn’t seen since I was, well, 20. Like, I stutter and stumble on my words all the time again. Between that and getting older, I just don’t care to be social nearly as often as I was pre-covid. Which I still feel bad about and I’m not sure how healthy it is for me to have normalized isolation, but I also am at a point where I don’t feel the urge to improve. Maybe that’s just the depression.
The biggest erosion to my quality of life in recent years wasn’t covid itself, but something that overlapped with the pandemic and continues to haunt my life: chronic pain. It started in late 2020 and has ebbed and flowed since, with little rhyme or reason. I’ve tried so many things to quell it and all it’s done is suck the life out of me. My own personal vampire. How can I make plans with people, let alone for myself, when I have no idea how painful tomorrow or a week or a month from now will be? I can’t even share the pain with most because they won’t get it. People don’t understand when you look completely normal but you’re internally a mess. They take for granted things like being able to sit in a car or on a couch without triggering a headache. I know I did too before it happened to me. Two rounds of Botox and I’m still not cured, despite its supposed elixir qualities, and so I’ve begun resigning myself to a life of pain and just making the most of it. Which is still depressing.
Since I keep bringing it up, I should mention I can tell how depressed I am. I spent my 20s trying to build myself up, as an artist, and later through community, only to wind up here. Despite all I did, I feel as pathetic as I did ten years ago. I’m just as empty as I was then. I never got what I wanted in the end. I look at anyone my age or younger and they always feel more accomplished than me at a similar age. I wish I could get out of my way and just let me do the things I want with my life. Or at least stop comparing myself to others. But I don’t even know how realistic my goals are anymore.
Having my weakest social life in a decade does present an opportunity though. It makes it easy to leave Edmonton and start anew, like I’ve long dreamt. I made a point of basing myself in Edmonton this summer, partly to be here again during the best time of the year to be here, but also partly to try and be available to hang with people. I’ve barely hung out with anyone though, despite making it clear that I am here on multiple occasions. I think the thing I realized is that I’m not in anybody’s core group. You know, the people you go for brunch or to the movies or dancing with every week. Which is fine on a case-by-case basis, but in aggregate, it sucks. People tend to have friend groups, whereas I just have (one-on-one) friends in ever-dwindling numbers. I become apprehensive in groups of people due to a lack of experience. I never know when to talk without talking over someone else and the presence of multiple personalities gives me anxiety.
And yet, I still want the group. A tight-knit core community. Growing up with sitcoms, like Friends and How I Met Your Mother, no doubt gave me a lot of false hope that I too would one day have a group of friends I’d hang out with and who’d support me in my 20s. I don’t know if those kinds of groups are unrealistic, because I’ve seen versions of it, but they’re probably unrealistic for me. And yet, seeing it repeatedly, and feeling a coziness about these shows’ portrayal of that, makes me want it.
For my 30th birthday, I had one of the lowest numbers of people wishing me a “happy birthday” in recent memory. Which is a superficial metric, I’ll admit, but it makes me feel undervalued, particularly when I remember friends birthdays and have celebrated with them. To me, friends wish each other a happy birthday and that’s just a normal thing people who care about each other do. That’s probably too high an expectation but it’s sometimes hard to tell what’s unrealistic and what’s just been normalized by an atomized society.
I stopped making birthday plans with people a few years ago, partly due to the pandemic, but mostly because it was such a pain to coordinate anything with more than a couple of people. It never worked out, and it was too labourious, so I decided to start doing something I knew I’d enjoy: going somewhere. I’ve liked that, but I still wind up disappointed because now not only can people not just come to celebrate with me, they can’t send a two-word message to me either. I vented about this to a friend and she had a good insight: we were conditioned to feel validated by endless “happy birthdays” for years on Facebook because everyone was instantly reminded, meaning it was near-impossible for people to miss. That culture is largely gone, and so people need to remember on their own. I admit I’m not perfect at that either, but I still make an effort. I’ve come to realize I seem to put in more effort with friends than most people do, and over the years have tried to dial back how much I invest, but it’s hard because I still crave closeness.
So why don’t I just fuck off, so to speak? I don’t like Edmonton and I think being here isn’t good for my mental health. Unfortunately, I’m in a bit of an urbanist purgatory5 because Canada is one giant housing crisis right now and the City of Champions is one of the few remaining affordable places to be. Anywhere I’d consider in this country is significantly pricier and I can’t justify it. I don’t know how others justify it. What joy is Victoria if you can’t afford to do anything besides go for a walk? I should’ve left when I was younger, before this all got so dire. I could’ve managed Toronto prices a decade ago. But who knows — maybe if I had moved there I still would’ve gotten renovicted and wound up in dire straits anyway. I should’ve at least done that semester abroad in Utrecht, though. Now I feel like I’m stuck here. Or Winnipeg, I guess, the only other city I wound up in. A city I never thought I would live in, mostly because I already found Edmonton too small and suburban. At least I still pass as a Torontonian in Detroit.6
I don’t know if I’m ever going to leave Edmonton at this rate. School sucked up so much of my time because I wanted to still pursue photography and have some leisure time, so I took a lighter course load. Then I had mentally weak periods, which reduced or removed my course load altogether. So, 7 years to complete a 4-year degree. Now I’ve aged out of working holiday visas and Canada is too expensive. I feel like I’m Sandra at the end of Young Adult. After giving main character Mavis a pep talk about how great she is for leaving her dumpy Minnesota town for Minneapolis, Sandra asks her to take her back to the “Mini Apple” with her. But Mavis, in a standoffish mean girl tone tells her, “oh, you’re good here” and walks away. I’m Sandra and Edmonton is all I’ll ever be. Forever.
Another reason I feel so pathetic is that I’m so behind my peers. I’ve done my 20s completely out of sync with people my own age, so much so I’m perhaps the last Peter Pan in this Peter Pan Generation. And that’s alienating in a way I never anticipated. In university, I got older, but my classmates all stayed the same age. Which, in case you’re wondering, is 12. As in they all look 12 to me, and have for a long time. I was always self-conscious about the age gap in university, as I started 5 years after high school and was usually much older than everyone. No matter how many times people told me it didn’t matter, and no matter how much I knew that to be objectively true, it didn’t change the way I felt about the situation. It felt like I was doing life in the wrong order. Which isn’t necessarily bad, but it is lonely.
Doing things out of sync with the usual life journey makes me unrelatable. And I wish I related more to people my own age. People who grew up with the same cultural cues, who understand my emotional state better. You know, my generation. But anytime I meet someone new my age I get very uncomfortable. Despite the claims for years about Millennials never growing up, they did. Compared to me, they all seem decently well-adjusted, with more complete life experience, while being far more responsible and far less sheltered. They have careers established, are married, maybe getting a down payment on a home, and perhaps even getting pregnant. What am I doing? Writing on Substack, apparently. As much as I tell myself I don’t need to conform, this social pressure to do exactly that and fit neatly into what’s expected of you at a certain age is hard to dismantle in my brain. So I’m a socially inept loser who’s accomplished nothing in his 30 years on Earth. Because I was late to the party on so many things, I’ve spent too much time with Gen Z who mostly just makes me feel ancient. And before that, before university, I spent too much time around elder Millennials who made me feel juvenile. I never belonged with the people around me but because they were the ones around me I’ve felt disconnected from my own cohort.
The covid era of the past several years might be my version of what the stereotypical American Millennial born in the late ‘80s felt in the late 2000s. Covid destroyed any momentum I had and the dust still hasn’t settled. Like those before me, I’m sure the harms will take a while to be undone. The past few years seem to have been rough on Gen Z more than Millennials. In the “Millennials Grew Up” piece, Peterson noted that many in my generation were finally able to buy a home during the pandemic, before interest rates rose, a little win for the lost generation. Not all were able to reap this benefit, but this period of the early 2020s did allow for many of my Millennials to move upwards in a way that would’ve felt inconceivable 15 years ago. But I’m not buying a house anytime soon (if ever) — have you taken a look at me? I’m not exactly homeowner material.
I feel caught between things. My time in university overlaps with Gen Z, my major global event that upended everything is more in line with Gen Z. And yet, I remember dial-up Internet and 9/11 and relate to a lot of Millennial culture.
But, as it turns out, in a roundabout way, I kind of wound up with the stereotypical Millennial experience despite not having the stereotypical 2008 origin story. I still lack strong finances, I didn’t do the normal life moments in the order or in the time they’re normally assigned, and often feel lost and like my dreams never panned out, while struggling to grow up into a functional adult. I meandered from the median Millennial, but what’s more Millennial than meandering from the pre-ordained median? I honestly don’t know why I’m trying to justify my Millennial-ness now. Let’s move on.
How do you even find community these days? I’ve made so many attempts but come up empty, only occasionally meeting a one-off that I click with fleetingly. For much of my 20s, I used social media as a crutch for friend-finding. Initially, I was kind of annoying about it, but after a while, it happened more naturally. Sometimes people would find me and sometimes I would find them. And yet I recently came to the conclusion that I need to stop seeking community online. Not only is it tied to demon apps like Instagram, but it doesn’t generally bear fruit in the same way as organic relationships that arise in person, at least for me.
I’ve learnt that it’s a lot harder for me to create a meaningful and lasting connection when it’s mediated in cyberspace. Much of the early “getting to know somebody” stuff happens via text and so all of that initial interaction misses vital things like body language and intonation to really grasp who somebody is, what they mean, and how you vibe with them. It means I won’t have an organic familiarity and comfort with someone, even if I know their life story. I had a job at a hardware store in the late ‘10s, which for those who know me, know that that’s the furthest thing from a natural environment for me. Even more, the people I worked with were often quite different from me, with contrasting politics, values, and class backgrounds. And yet that was the healthiest work environment I’ve ever been in. I really came to value spending time with my co-workers. We had fun and could have conversations that lasted hours, despite our differences. I was more comfortable with my co-workers than a lot of my friends. I attribute that comfort both to their open-mindedness and my ability to organically get to know them in real-time rather than mediated by pixels on a screen. This process gradually sunk my anxiety and I built a natural comfort. Related, perhaps the strongest new friendship this decade thus far is somebody I befriended through my last job. But, you can’t always make friends at work.
In Winnipeg, I’m arguably less lonely, as I see people more regularly, and these are all people I’ve met in person first. But the vast majority of it is mediated by my partner and so the texture is a similar awkwardness to digitally-mediated relationships I’ve developed on my own. While I’m definitely welcome at things and I’m told that I’m liked, I don’t know my partner’s friends and lack comfort. I feel like I exist only in relation to my partner with them, which is not necessarily their fault, but it is the situation. I know that my partner tells their friends all about me when I’m not around, so they no doubt know me better than I know them. But them getting to know me is through someone else, rather than through me, so I don’t have a natural building up of a relationship and therefore familiarity. Plus, when I do hang out, it’s usually in group contexts (which I loathe), where everybody already knows each other and has an established language of cues and lore, and so people are sometimes speaking about things without filling me in on the details, and I’m left out.
I guess I should bring up my mother, too, which I’d had high hopes for in my youth. Despite how unstable our relationship has long been, I decided in 2014 — the same year I was making friends and getting exhibited — that I would end my maternal embargo. You know how we’re socialized to think highly of moms and how important they are? How almost everyone is closer to their mom than their dad? Yeah, I can’t relate to any of that. The exaggerated number of Mother’s Day cards vs Father’s Day cards only cements the divide for me. I’ve never felt safe or comfortable around my mom. Still, by ‘14, I thought maybe things would’ve changed. It had been 7 years.
In many ways, things did change. She grew up a lot, in a way that almost felt like I was being gaslit over my childhood experience because she was so different. But also, we were different. We’d spent so many years apart, living separate lives, that it was hard to reconcile our present with that. I loftily hoped when we started talking again that maybe I’d have a sip of that stereotypical mother-child relationship, but I didn’t. We remained surface-level, exchanging lunches every 3-9 months, because we didn’t have much in common. In 2020, I stopped seeing her again after we both kept one-upping each other in an episode of mutually assured destruction over concerns about her hosting large social gatherings pre-vax. I did the math recently, and I’ve actually spent 1/3rd of my life without my mom in it.
I spent so much of my upbringing surrounded by adults who saw something in me. Maybe not my mom, but others. Creativity, talent, intelligence, maturity — whatever it may be, it made me feel like I was destined for greatness, which is probably how I got into such exaggerated reveries in my early 20s. I think because of how sheltered and anxious I was, I dwelt too long in the comfort of daydreams, putting off the work of making those dreams a reality. It’s easier to imagine a destiny than to achieve it. And now all I have are the lost dreams of my youth. I never achieved the greatness I thought I would. Maybe I’m not as great as those adults thought. Instead, I listen to friends judge others for behaviours they don’t realize describe me — staying home to watch shows and movies (rather than go out) or living with a parent. Even when they don’t say anything about how pathetic I am, I can hear it in their facial expressions when I describe my life now. Which just socially reinforces how inept and out of sorts I am.
If I could pinpoint any constant through my adult life thus far, it’s probably anxiety. I don’t want to do, I just want to think about it. I’m coddled by comfort, and branching past that feels insurmountable. It’s easier for me to think about how great it would be to do something than actually commit to it. I’m sure that’s the case for many, but in my case, it’s severely impeded my growth and progress, because I never overcame my anxiety and just did something, such that I feel lacking in experience compared to people younger than me. Obviously, this is rooted in childhood trauma, where my response has been to cope with that pain by covering myself in a blanket and not budging. Because after so much instability, I just need to do things that feel safe, even if unchallenging.
I think this is why I dwelt so much in being young through my 20s. I didn’t want to face reality, I didn’t want to face responsibility. University, for all its faults, let me have that. It worked for a while because, despite age gulfs, I still felt young. Until covid. And now that I’m looking at finally having to be an adult, as I no longer have the crutch of toxic academia to hold me back, I’m petrified. All I want to do is sprawl out in the comfort of this freedom I have and never leave, as has been the case for years. Sort of like in the morning when you need to get to work but the couch is insurmountably comfortable that you just want to spend hours laying there instead. That sensation has been my entire 20s in a nutshell. And it’s probably at least partly why I don’t feel 30. When I think of a 30-year-old and where they’re at in life, they’re not me, coming off the coattails of a protracted shirking of responsibility.
Throughout my life, there've been people that I’ve known that were broken down in various ways, by various circumstances. Looking at my life now, I’m worried about following in their footsteps. I hope not, but I’m clearly in a dark and deeply neurotic place, and I cannot see myself emerging from it. Mostly because I don’t have the motivation and drive I did a decade ago, when I first did this dance of breaking free via socializing and minor artistic success. I’m tired and don’t feel empowered to improve. Which is, again, probably more the depression than anything else. I’m well aware that you need to be willing to improve yourself; others can only take you so far. But I feel like somebody needs to save me from this because I can’t seem to break myself free of this cycle. I’m also not sure how much of it is bad and how much of it just goes against the grain of societal expectations. It’s not actually that big of a deal that I have less social energy and would rather spend time by myself. That’s just being an introvert. Nevertheless, it still feels like certain lines are being crossed that err towards unhealthy. I don’t want to wind up as hollow as the other broken people I’ve known. I’m empty enough as it is. I’d love for this post to be some public announcement of my intent to steer clear of this, but I know me, and so this isn’t. I won’t commit to something I know I won’t be able to maintain with certainty.
I sense that my 20s have been one giant boomerang. Everything came full circle. I started the decade empty, and I’m ending it empty. I wound up pathetic, stunted, and depressed at 30 much like I was on my 20th birthday, despite all the attempts to the contrary. The difference now is that I’m more mature and have a greater perspective on things. But I wish I did more with my young adulthood than putter and flaneur because I don’t have the energy to do my dreams anymore.
I don’t know if I’ll ever have the life I want. Maybe I need to work on accepting that and moving on from my youthful idealization. I don’t know if it really gets better or just more numb. I know it is hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel when you’re in the depths of despair, but it truly feels like any significant enjoyment will be out of compromise or delusion sometimes. Maybe my 30s will be coming to terms with that. We can’t always get what we want and sometimes you just need to make the most of the cards you’re dealt. I still hope things will get better, even if I’m seemingly lacking the tools to do so at the moment. Being a hollow alien is not a vibe except in Roswell. Maybe 2024 will be like a 2014 redux, only more mature and hopefully healthier. I think I need to start therapy again, though. I can’t just keep putting out embarrassing essays like this.
Anyway, hello 30s.
Stats is a planning degree requirement at the UofA for some reason. I tried but failed at it. So human geography it was. Worth noting that my planning friends who did take it and later found a career in planning haven’t really used stats either.
This is another draft essay I’ve picked at and intended to post around my convocation and never got around to. I really need to be in the right mindset to speak on my university experience, and I worry I’m moving past it without finishing this essay. I guess we’ll see if it sees the light of day.
UofA to rest-of-world translation: this was (is?) the human geography and urban planning club on campus.
And now we’re all so valid and the word doesn’t mean anything.
A topic which I’m hoping to expand upon soonish.
This is a reference to how both times I’ve been to Detroit, people thought I was from Toronto. The first time was because I was with Torontonians and so that stuck until things got clarified and I was outed as an Edmontonian. The second time was because I was wearing a Toronto-themed shirt one day, though only other Torontonians also visiting DET got the reference.