The Doomed Generation

Written February 23, 2009

Did I ever think when it was my generation's turn at the plate it was gonna be this fucked up? No, I sure didn't. Just like every generation thought before mine, "We'd rule this world if it was ours! We'd knock it outta the park!" Man, If we'd only known it'd be up on blocks with but a few sellable parts we would have never wanted it.

I hate to be a 90s girl on you but we thought we had this thing in the bag. With our grungy plaid, social causes and weed in hand you couldn't get any truthier than us. The 60s and 70s couldn't dream of the realism we were getting to the bottom of. We were gonna have better jobs, less wars and our kids were gonna put the way you raised us to shame. Then Al Gore lost. And just like God punished us all for the actions of Eve was the same way Ticketmaster bent us over and tore us up the backside for Eddie Vedder's. Capitalism reigns and all us coffee shop lovin' poets of the 90s will repent on our knee's somewhere in the middle of a Starbucks line.

You baby boomers coulda told us somethin' in the milk ain't right. If you'd really loved us you would told us in those damn career building classes to pick a job we could handle cause Lord knows we wouldn't be out doing the job we'd love. You shoulda said "What won't make you want to shoot yourself in the face while sittin' in the after 5 traffic jam? Okay then, go do that." But no. I don't know if it was false hope, absolute denial or pure cowardice that made you fail to mention or prepare us for The Heartbreak we'd all individually face.

Ah, The Heartbreak. Unrequited and lost love has nothing on this one. This is a deep well of sadness and darkness that takes a few years to really land on your ass in.

The first stumble backwards happens just around 21. Life is generally care free for most of us. But suddenly driving down some familiar road in your hometown you realize if you don't hurry the hell up you ain't never gonna be that rockstar you thought you were. Or European traveler, National Geographic journalist, ruler of the world, whatever. Whatever it was you thought you were gonna be at 16 reaches out to you for a hand in survival. Free falling, it screams at you to get your shit together before you have a nasty wife who's gained more weight than you can fathom and two kids you barely care to remember the names of. The kick in the gut is too hard to handle and easy to ignore. Life will just work itself out. You'll get there, little rockstar. The world is your oyster and all that shit. You're not going to let that happen to you.

Of course, until you're driving that same goddamn road you were before listening to the latest Top 20 Ear Rape, loosening the tie of that temporary, "stepping stone" job you've been in for the last 6 years. Boom! It piercingly strikes your brain that your dream never worked it's way to fruition did it. The heartbreak fully reveals itself. Ouch, kiddo. Year's in the making this is one painful revelation not even a kiss on the forehead could mend.

Stand up. Dust yourself off and look around. Not even Alice would believe the shit that's down this rabbit hole. How in the hell did we get here? Human bombs are going off in Iraq but so long as gas is under a dollar a litre and we've all got a little sex appeal we could really care less what's happening in those brown skinned countries. I'm sure Obama will take care of it. We've been so bruised and betrayed that we've lost ourselves. We got sold down the river, bought into every shit eating grin that was put before us and all we've got to show for it is high rent, student loans and ridiculous visa bills. We're too busy distracting ourselves from The Heartbreak to admit the cost of dreamin'. Disappointment is an ugly depression. But if you can scrape together enough for the prescription we've got a pill that can put you right back on the path of debt building delusion.

Man, there's something in this death, in this heartbreak that relates to every glass of wine your mother ever had after work, doesn't it? Especially when she had the whole bottle. Not only did she not become the "whatever" she'd thought she'd be, but her AND her children are celebrity obsessed, emotionally devoid, financially strapped standing at the foot of a greed induced recession.

Hey, some mornings the mirror doesn't relay the prettiest image. We struck a foul ball, 90s child. a very foul ball. If we had anything left from the good ol' years of honesty we'd admit to ourselves that bringing a cloth bag to the grocery store is not a good enough band-aid to this colossal boo-boo. We done fucked up. Congrats. You're an adult in the Doomed Generation. You might as well smile, even though hell, you're not even on candid camera.