Friends,
I try very hard on this page to be positive and loving on this page. I try to contribute to as much healing as possible. However, spend enough time on this planet as a breathing, thinking, sentient creature, and you begin to recognize that healing is not all rainbows and shiatsu massages. Sometimes you need to break down. Sometimes you need to fight for yourself. Sometimes you have to do both at the same time.
As a young woman, people (family friends, neighbors old classmates) often ask me what I am going to do with my life. When they ask this, they usually mean "are you going into a lucrative field, and if not, how are you going to feed yourself?"
If I were smart, I would lie and say I'm saving up money to go to law school or something equally lofty and practical and then quickly change the subject, but I always tell the truth: I'm going to write and work a day job.
When asked what kind of day job, I say one of the default alternatives: teacher, copy writer, copy editor, blogger (wink, wink).... but the truth is, I have no idea.
Whoever it is I'm talking to can tell I have no idea and then the endless spouting of unwanted advice begins, during which I am supposed to cordially nod along and smile and say "Oh, I never thought of that."
To those people I say: Thank you for your concern. I am an adult. I can figure my life out on my own, and I do not have to do it right this second on the spot to appease your curiosity. I'll be just fine.
So much of my life has been an effort to appease others people's concerns or opinions about me. When I finally got the announcement that I could start work on Monday at my first paying job since college, my first thought wasn't "now I can afford yoga classes!" or "I'm finally joining the adult world!", it was "now all those people telling me what to with my life will shut the fuck up!"
And that's sad.
What's even sadder is as I'm typing this, I can hear their voices in my head. They're calling me spoiled, bratty, entitled... But if taking control of my own life, knowing what I want, and trusting God with things I have yet to figure out is being Millennial Trash, then I guess I'm Millennial Trash.
To my fellow Millennials (or other people who simply don't have all the answers), trust yourself. The world is not the same as it was 10 years ago. We must forge a new way and to do that, we must make space for ourselves to innovate, explore, and invent. We will make mistakes along the way, and that's alright. We'll learn from them.
Namaste.
