It’s Not You, It’s Them

Where do you park your feelings of knowing that your society is failing you in more ways than you can count?

Before I start to write, I rub my temples, because I do not even know where to start with where we are. Everyday, I try not to sink into the abyss of frustration, and I take comfort in knowing I am not the only one. Some of us are hanging on by a thread to maintain the lives we live and our sanity. I’m a millennial and I think our survival skills are unmatched. Being born in the 80s is unrivaled. Have you seen 80s fashion? It should never be repeated, yet we survived that.

We were the generation who was told “If you get a great education, the world is your oyster,” yet here we are crying as we look at our bank accounts and the degradation of our society as a whole. We did not think that some of us would be hell-bent on destroying the rest of us.

We survived childhoods of being outside without our parents not knowing exactly where we were. There was only one requirement which was don’t let the street lights catch you outside. The fact that many more of us did not go missing is shocking.

My family did not own a family computer until high school—I can still hear the dial-up internet sound to this day. We survived the wild, wild, west of My Space, the early stages of social media. MapQuest was a lifesaver when it came along with directions you could print. Lose them and you were on your own. We survived flip phones—flip phones. I say no more. We are the generation who were forced to tough it out, because mommy was not making our play dates. We either made it out semi-okay or we didn’t. It was sink or swim.

Thank goodness we are all adults now who realized some of this crap was just trauma masked as tough love. We had no idea we would survive two economic recessions and a potential coup in the United States of America. With everything happening around us, some days I can’t tell if the warmth in my body is perimenopause, a fibromyalgia flare, or the reaction to me just thinking about the insane cost of trying to live on this hunk of rock floating in space while providing for two children. Are we all jaded at this point or what?

***

It was Monday. I was walking through my apartment feeling really content about finishing up more of the decals in my girls’ room. Two days was not enough time to clean, organize, make time to spend with my family and work on my small project, but one of my kids happened to be sick that day, so I got an additional day to finish up. I walked into the girls’ bedroom and admired my handiwork and a thought disrupted my movement.

“Mom, I can’t wait for us to have a house.”

These were the words of my older daughter echoing in my head. Occasionally, she reminds me that we need to buy a house. That thought was followed by:

“Will we ever be able to buy a house?”

Then came the:

“Renters are worse off if it all goes to shit. Homeowners will have it bad if they lose their jobs. They can lose their homes, but renters will have it so bad.”

I paused and forced my mind to go dark. Not a single thought. I was overwhelming myself and felt I may have been wallowing in a bit of self-pity. But was it self-pity or an acknowledgment of our current reality? All I wanted to do was enjoy what I had done, but living in early-stage American fascism and the awareness that it is happening sometimes strips me of my joy.

I am trying to not allow myself to wallow in it, but when you get body slammed daily by the news of what is happening in my country and around the world, it is hard not to. At the same time, I am giving myself the opportunity to feel and process what is happening. It is a lot and it weighs heavy for so many of us who did not ask for this and who do not know where to park these feelings.

Sometimes, I wish I could be as oblivious as possible; be one of those people who could go about their daily lives like everything normal, even if the whole earth was on fire. But I can’t. I suffer from something called Empathy and as painfully exhausting as it can be at times, I honestly wouldn’t have it any other way. It reminds me of my humanity and the expectations.

***

Two years ago, I was making a move from NYC to Upstate NY, because I just couldn’t deal with the hustle and bustle of the city anymore. I never connected to the idea of this fast-paced life that so many people seem to gravitate to and thrive in. I am an island girl through and through. I connect to a slower pace of life where liming is a part of the culture. I had been yearning to leave the city for about a decade, but went along with what my partner wanted. I finally decided it was time to move, with or without him.

So I walked into a car dealership in Brooklyn to get a car—a necessity for life in Upstate New York. With an over 800 credit score, only school debt which wasn’t in default, a job that paid well, and a credit utilization of 11%. I thought that would be ideal, and I would be able to finance a car. I was so wrong.

The representative looked me square in my eyes after running my credit score without my authorization and said that I did not have the right kind of debt. I briefly listened to her explanation to keep myself from laughing in her face. After listening to her, I said “Thank you” and walked out.

The explanation repeated itself at a few more car dealerships. After being exhausted by the search, I finally decided to purchase an eight-year-old car in cash. I was content with my purchase, but felt like I was pushed to the margins for not having “the right kind of debt” such as a previous car or being a home owner.

I felt penalized for not having it all together. I was punished for not having a car, but the structure made it impossible for me to get financing to purchase a car. It makes car dealerships who declare “Bad credit, no problem,” with offers of bad credit financing options sound extremely predatory—which they usually are.

We also know that transit desserts are necessary for auto makers and oil companies to thrive. It’s a vicious cycle, so we pick our poison. Big city with high costs of living, public transportation and high stress, or a small town with a transit desert, lower cost of living and lower stress? It all matters what you’re willing to trade.

***

What remains far too often is we blame ourselves for our failings, because we are forced to live in a system that conditions us to only look inward for all the problems and failings in our lives. It was betting on the idea that we would not wake up and realize that it may not be depression if your life is depressing and it’s not anxiety if your life is stressful.

There is a reason why self-help literature thrives and everyone and their mama is trying to sell you a course on what you are doing wrong that is causing you to fail. They need you in a state of perpetually seeking and never satisfied, so blaming you is easier than changing the structures of our society.

This is the upside down system that we live in. The one that strips us of ancestral, holistic and ingenious practices, and turns around to rebrand it as commodified self-care and leisure. The one that believes money makes the world go round, rather than people and communities. It is the one that touts God, country and family during election cycles, but have no backbone to fight for what is right or just.

I hope when we are done pathologizing our collective experiences we can see that the problem is more external than we would like to think.