Hey guys I hope your well!!! So a couple of weeks ago I turned 26, and maybe most of you can empathise, but birthday always fill me with so much anxiety. So I thought i’d play around with my feelings with some creative writing and to share my resolve, which actually manifested through writing this. But anyways, here it goes, A 90’s Babies Lament:
Turning 26 is like being born again, but with no mother, no swollen breast of support to sup on or giant hand to pluck you from the peril of your blunders. No longer the baby of the generation, you’re rejected into a world where you can no longer benefit from the ’25 and under’ discounts, submerged into a abyss of the full-priced unknown. Your once avid tenacity towards your flowery dreams crust over into a cocoon of anxiety. Your bountiful bouquet of aspirations mutated into strangling weeds by the toxic unplanned overdraft fee. Facebook is the devil; a mirage of happiness, pregnant bellies, filters, grand weddings, self-promotion, “I’d like to announce…” posts, gap year travels, homes and… food. This catalogue of “look how great my life is…” sends your mental health into disarray as you torment the delicate fibres of your ticking vessel, as to why you cant accomplish this much success & happiness within 5 minutes of waking up.
Swept out from your home borough, by the bristly brush of gentrification, your tax issued for being too poor to live in the zone that birthed you is the the weekly travel card (zone 1-3 = £38.70). Your day taxed by the 9 to 5, consists of strategising how you can maintain your care free creative life, explore freely and educate yourself, whilst ignoring the gas-related grenades that fall through your letter box. Overdue bills collect and cement into islands on your kitchen counter, as you navigate your meagre wage through the stream of leech infested student loan repayments.
The irritating anecdotes that fell from your parents mouths, bludgeoning your juvenile ego into an erratic rage, slips from your own mouth and that brazen pubescent gob that once bellowed “You don’t understand me”, now buegrudeoningly quivers “I understand you now”. Your tunnel vision dreams begin to crack, separating to reveal the needs of those who’re coming after you. No longer an empty vessel of self-promotion, your talents morph into a calling, a conviction. Faces of the next generation tilt towards your light, bridging a gap between them and the core structure of those who’ve showed you the way. Your new addiction of trying to fit as many things into your life, before the dreaded 30, breathes innovation into your walk and builds a new point of view, a voice. A voice towering high, as the beams that once educated your adolescent-teenybopper tongue, begin to fall away. Despite the turmoil of surviving in this tussling rat race, you are your ancestors prize, their wildest dreams, their sacrifice. A tapestry of sacrifice, no matter how big or small the stitch, woven together to create the threshold that’ll propel you into your destiny.
So sow seeds in boundless dreams and let your tears nurture the food that’ll feed you and your tribe that follows. Release the sand bags of doubt and negativity that render you sluggish and light the blowtorch that will blast you beyond what you could ever have imagined. Be the patch that’ll skyrocket your descendants high. Dream.
God Bless The 90’s Babies.
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