This essay was originally published on Medium on July 30, 2023
How many of you are in therapy?
I can’t see you, but I’m assuming quite a few of you put your hands up. I see my therapist (Dr. C, we love her) twice a week and it’s been a game-changer. Lately, we’ve been working on embracing anger. It’s a feeling that I really struggle to acknowledge and express. So much so that any time I do express anger Dr. C smiles and throws her hands in the air celebrating the occasion.
The first time I got notably angry in a session was when I told Dr. C that I’d been priced out of owning a home in our metropolitan city. I told her that I did everything “right:” I got good grades, went to college, majored in a field that was logical (instead of creative writing, which is what I wanted,) and got a 9–5. From childhood, I’d been told that if I did all of those things, I could have a life like my boomer parents: A nice house, a few kids, vacations to theme parks, and two nice cars in the driveway—one for my wife and one for me.
If you’re a fellow millennial, you probably know that this isn’t how things actually played out. I work hard and I make “good” but here in my California city, rent is 123% higher than the national average. (Before you jump in my comments telling me to move: Don’t. My wife and I are an interracial couple in a queer relationship, so few parts of the country are safe for us in the current political climate. California is our safe haven.) Factor in student loans, bills, rent, and supplementing my wife’s income and my income doesn’t go nearly as far as I thought it would when I procured this salary.
Once I admitted my anger and really felt it, Dr. C made me grieve the life I thought I’d have. Now I’m accepting the reality in front of me. I have a feeling that I’m not alone in that, so here are the biggest benchmarks of success that have changed in accepting that life in 2023 is nothing like me and my friends thought it would be.
Buying a house 🏡 This is not in the cards for many of us. With the housing market and affordable housing crisis, if you haven’t bought a house already, it’s going to be really hard to do it now. So it’s time to shift our dream house fantasy to our dream rental reality. You can still check out Zillow mansions in your free time, but also, get clear on what your apartment goals look like. I’m aiming towards a 3 bedroom with 2.5 baths. A bedroom and a bathroom for me, my wife, and guests. I’d love a patio, hardwood floors, and an in-unit washer and dryer. Oh, and off-street parking is key.
Children — Part I 👶🏽 It’s becoming much more common not to want them—whether as a well-thought-out choice or just a life circumstance. With the climate change situation, the rising cost of living, continuous racism, and waning LGBTQ+ rights, is it any surprise that many of us do not want/feel comfortable having kids?
Children — Part 2 👨👧👦 One of my favorite things about friends having babies is that they’re making the choice to raise their kids differently than their parents raised them, and that’s pretty cool. My parents used to leave me and my sisters in the car while she went grocery shopping. Would I do that to the kids I auntie today? Hell naw. Staying in the car while strangers walked all around and spotted me and my sisters chillin’ without any adult protection was kind of scary. I don’t want my little niblings (a gender-neutral term for nieces and nephews) to feel that fear.
Work 💻 A lot of us graduated high school or college thinking we’d get jobs doing something we loved. I’ve done that and was treated horribly. Today, I think most of us are looking for jobs that pay a living wage and treat us like people. You know, basic things: Health care benefits, sick leave, PTO, a realistic workload, competent bosses, safe working environments, and a chance to grow/advance if we want it. If you end up finding something you love to do that offers these benefits, that’s when you know you’ve truly made it.
Debt-Free 💸 Okay, so I don’t know how everyone else was raised, but my mom is a department store shopaholic who always carried debt, even though I was taught to eliminate all debt. She’d say, “Don’t make the mistakes I did.” But let’s be real: My mom never faced predatory student loans and owned multiple cars and a house before the astronomical cost of living we’re seeing now. There are a lot of reasons you might carry debt and I’m here to tell you that it’s okay. 🧠 Think of debt as a tool. I used a credit card to move to LA when I was 24 because I was a lesbian living in a tiny Virginia town where it was legal to fire me and evict me because of my sexuality. I don’t regret that debt at all. I could carry it for the rest of my life and still never regret it. It was a tool that I used when I needed it and I refuse to feel bad about that.
Relationships 💕 I could write a whole post on this topic. Relationships don’t have to look any one way. You can be monogamous, polyamorous, or happily single while you do (or don’t) mingle. You can have one partner or be in a throuple, you can get married at 20 or decide to never walk down the aisle. It’s all good. The goal of romantic/sexual relationships is to be happy, so as long as you don’t have to hurt anyone to make it happen, live how you want.
Marriage 💍 If you decide to take the plunge, do it your way. Yeah, you could have 200 people in a banquet hall or you could just show up at the courthouse with a witness or two. People marry on Zoom and hold tiny guerilla-style ceremonies in public parks. There’s no “right” way to get married anymore. There’s also no one way your marriage should look, so if you and your spouse sleep in different rooms or have multiple lovers, do you, babe.
Every day, millennials are redefining what adulthood and major milestones look like for our generation. In some ways, it sucks to know that the life we envisioned (or that parents, mentors, and teachers pushed on us) isn’t going to materialize in the way we thought it would. But, in another sense, it’s really freeing to let all of those expectations go. Yes, the world is changing alarmingly fast, but that also means we get to choose how we forge ahead in this unstable new world. Once the grieving is over, we can all greet our reality with enthusiasm knowing that we’re in control of how we handle our life journey from here. ✌🏾🤎