being millennial
frag·ment
noun
ˈfraɡmənt/
- a small part broken or separated off something.
verb
fraɡˈment/
- break or cause to break into fragments.

To live must be to exist in fragments-trying to piece a life together.
My mother always says to focus on this moment.
I try, or at least my brain attempts, to plan for the future so I can make “better” decisions. Society has reinforced over and over again that planning enables one to succeed in this human life. I often find myself paralyzed in the decision making process. If I do A then B will be the outcome but maybe instead I try X and B will be the outcome as well as Z. I run through the alphabet of inputs to measure the weight and success of each letter.
This brings me back to my mom’s voice “only focus on this moment”. I discredit her advice because she can’t possibly be trusted on this topic…then I discredit my own voice by thinking “but can I?”.
Focusing on this moment causes me to take a deep breath. I want more clean air than I am currently breathing. I don’t like where I am. The ambient stressors in my life weigh me down. I feel like I deserve better but does any human deserve anything?
The beginning: I was raised in a small town by my mother, her sisters and my grandmother. I visited my father’s side of the family days out of the year. I have two siblings.

A fragment: At sixteen I remember keeping my cell phone under my pillow hoping my mom would call. I wasn’t sure if she was alive. She left town after I brought a huge container of horse tranquilizer (inside methamphetamine) to the local police station. One night she showed up at my aunts. I heard her talk about being kidnapped, threatening to shoot someone in a hotel after her car was stolen, how she was living in Vegas. She spent a few years in prison and then came home a different person. My mother and father were partners in crime, they both have had their stints with drug dealing, jail time, recovery and relapse.
In the meantime: I went to college a few miles from home. I didn’t want to abandon my younger sister so I didn’t travel abroad like I wanted to. I knew I liked to make art and that I needed some type of therapy. I dumped thousands into art school. I learned to love criticism, so I guess that was worth $60,000.00 in student debt.
Now: I live 30 miles from where I was raised. I am still in debt. My mom is a drug counselor who still drowns herself in gambling addiction. My father is still serving one of many repeat drug offenses in jail. My sister is trying to figure out life but seems to always get sucked back into small town drama. She’s never traveled or seen any other culture besides white trash. My brother seems like a great person although I’ve never really spent much time with him. We all live within miles of a refinery, none of us can seem to escape living beneath a cloud of air that slowly kills everything.
I want: My goal is to buy land in the middle of nowhere, farm it organically, bring my family to live in little yurts and play with goats all day. I want to escape pollution, though I am not sure if this is possible. I know if I want to attain something I need to do it through participation in capitalism.
The paralysis: Every single day I wake up and battle with the fragility of the human psyche- my own -everyone else’s. I absolutely despise capitalism. How can I attain my goals without participating in a society that ruins things for money? Greed has wrecked every single ecosystem on earth. The most fragile, untouched by human skin, places have been thrown off balance because of humanity. My most basic frustration is the fact that when I am around people I have to breathe in clouds of pollution wafting off of their fragrant bodies and clothing, chemicals that persist for years, build up in our waterways and have been identified to cause a myriad of health problems- just to feel attractive or confident. I used to be able to focus on anything but the chemicals in the air. I know my brain is broken now but I practice not existing with my nose and lungs.
My attempts at participation in capitalism AKA why older people hate millennials:
Office job= soul vacuum, upper management has the whip, no activity, vending machine whispered in my ear all day
Cleaning job= breathing in toxic particles
Freelance= unreliable, pittance, crumbs
Move to a big city to try better paying office job= house raided by police- they chose the wrong apartment (now traumatized, but still alive)
Move back home= big fish in a small pond, attempting entrepreneurship (here now)
Another fragment: For the first time in my life I knew who I was- an activist. Water is life. For a few years now I have been doing my best to contribute to the fight for clean water. Because I grew up in a refinery town I never second guessed the rotten air floating all around me. I never thought about swimming in a river where Enbridge dumped it’s wastewater. I know it is my responsibility to question pollution from industries like fossil fuels. This felt empowering to know I could attempt to create change. I felt important for a few years. I am not sure if the trauma of my home being raided complied with the trauma of learning about the devastation of pollution everywhere from industries but my mind went into overload and exploded.
The realization that individuals are the problem, with every purchase, car ride, pollution in the form of continual sillage from activities such as laundry, spraying perfume, cleaning, pesticides on lawns etc… has created a pattern for me where I don’t want to interact with anyone ever again- including my “eco-friendly” neo liberal family.

I’ve changed.

I struggle to see humans with compassion. I don’t want to participate in activism because my “activist” friends are walking-talking smokestacks with arms and legs and fingers and hair. I lack the ability to find understanding.
I try to remind myself I have two things in common with all humans I hate:
- We were all born without asking to be put here.
- Societal reinforcement tell us “with planning we will have the fulfilling life we deserve”. We’re on the hamster wheel.
Today: I sit in an indoor air environment windows shut, VOCs floating around me, neighbors emitting pollution out of their dryer vents, obsessively mowing lawns, burning fossil fuels, polluting the lake a few meters away. I know that viewing humans as pointless wastes of space is not productive. I know I will never achieve my goals if I continue to focus my energy on frustration. I guess I just needed to write this down so I could move forward with my day.
Maybe everyone else is just like me? Fragmented and paralyzed?
Now I should try to put some energy into the business I’m trying to launch. One without a tangible product, one that focuses on experiences, one that doesn’t use resources (other than unethically mined metals for my computer).
I am a hypocrite and I need to be okay with that because the winters are cold here and I need a roof over my head.
If you feel this way and have some sort of idea how we can work together to change things, please let me know. Reach out. I’ve considered starting a kickstarter to buy land & implement a self sustaining community I just haven’t figured out the path to that point. If you have constructive criticism let me know in the comments. I’ll read every single one.
My bias: I am a cis — gender white woman.
I am not a writer though someday I’d like to learn.
