#GenerationRepeat
Round, and round the wheel goes — when it stops nobody knows!
What happens when life’s circumstances seem to look more like where you came from then where you want to go? Why does, and why is, it happen[ing]?
This is the story of many — cobbled together from several individuals who wish not to have personal information about their families or life circumstances revealed.
Accordingly, names have been invented but traits have been taken from real life people. A profession here… a location there… Enough to scramble any one person’s actual factuals.
This is the story for the numbered and unidentified millennials out there.
This is the story of the sometimes seemingly insurmountable financial and mental pressures produced when the child becomes the parent.
It’s been said,
“those that do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
Life is indeed cyclically! Individuals reliving the same trials they thought they have overcome; communities being established, growing, maturing, declining …repeat ; great civilizations rising and falling.
Call it destiny…
Call it fate…
Call the innate and invisible palpable force curating life’s cyclical nature…whatever you will…
But indeed life on a personal and societal level is repetitive.
Michael mother’s was a nurse and dad and former apache helicopter pilot turned commercial airline pilot. Michael is the third oldest of 5 siblings, including his two step-siblings. He is the oldest of three sibling between his mom and dad. Michael’s two step-siblings included one from each his mom and dad, preceding their marriage.
Michael grew up in the working-middle class — too poor to be comfortable, too educated and trained to be poor. Enough to struggle from month to month and hold on to ever evading dreams for a brighter day.
Born in 1987 and raised in Astoria, Queens, Michaels parents rose early and worked late. Ensuring their Michael would have a roof over their head and food on the table. Beginning at age seven, Michael’s parents begin to argue. The years rolled by: housing prices rose, fresh fruits and vegetables became a luxury — doing more with less became America’s mantra. Sleep became a luxury.
By eleven years old (1998), Michael’s mom and dad decided to divorce — economics of the working poor and the trapping pressures for the working-middle class eventually broke through the supposed immutable bounds of marriage.
Michael’s dad continued to provide for this family and come around to see Michael and his siblings, for some time.
The years continued to roll by and a dollar started to go a loooooong way…as there was less and less you could buy. By time Michael turned fourteen, he seen his dad less and less. By time Michael turned fifteen his Dad was all but gone from his life.
Like so many others — Michael’s Dad’ a vet, a father, and part of the working poor — was over taken by his demons.
Demons created by the horrors of war…. the Kafkaeseque nightmares about never being able to evade poverty’s extending hand…the burdening fist striking mighty and daily blows for life’s fleeting dreams.
Eventually turning to self-medication, bourbon and coke, by age 16 (2005) Michael’s dad went the way of Ozymandias. Michael, his mother, his siblings ,and Michael’s memories are the remains from his dad.
Time went on, Michael graduated high school. Michael went on to college to obtain a degree in chemistry and public policy (2009), then graduate school obtaining a Ph.D in nuclear chemistry and astronomy (2015) (yes, Michael was on it — unlike the games life plays, he played none!). Being part of the millennial generation, he itched and yearned to change the world, not just use use education to follow the “modified 40/40 plan.”
Following, graduate school Michael moved to Houston, Texas to be close to the Johnson Space Station. In actuality to pursue his dream — develop micro-organisms and staged protocols for the terraformation of planets. A dream that may seem esoteric too many but, a dream nonetheless.
You see, while the world spun out of control around— 9/11; Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes death; rise in asbestos mesothelioma cases; Occupy ___ (you fill in the blank); crash of the housing market; the Great Recession; tyrant assassination B-I-N-G-O (Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi) — Michael’s dreamt to not only fix the world we live in but to create new and better ones.
No, no — Michael did not have a God complex but true intellectual curiosity and unrelenting hope. Hope which at times Michael, felt he would have been spared many life pain’s if only he could feel less. Michael’s fascination with other planets and terraformation was based in his ideology on how to fix America’s problems. He believed, he believes that vision proceeds noble action and feeling proceeds vision.
As Michael set out to change the world. Life in Astoria continued on — his mom continued to struggle in New York City’s “rent is too damm high” real estate market while trying to continue to support her kids taking flight. Michael’s unrelenting unaccepting capitulation to the status quo, prayer, good luck, and hard-work led him begin down the road to success in his life. While in Houston he worked for a law firm as a patent agent — making assessments on patentability and developing patent applications.
At night — Michael would toil in his dreams, developing an epic business plan that would truly and actually let him reach the stars, eventually, transform one!
Making a humble wage — Michael lived modestly, following the advice of his since departed grandmother,
“separate your needs from your wants and you will never come up short.”
Michael would send money back home to his mother to help her with expenses; aide his siblings when he could with their journey’s , in particular his sister who seemed to be overcome by life’s demons and stayed in legal trouble.
About a year after Michael became settled (2017), things at home became too much to bare for his mother. Expenses far surpassed her income and her children, Michael excluded, became a burden. Michael’s mother bounds of love never ceased but her mental capacity was reached.
Slowly, Michael’s mother begin to descent into despair. Following the lead of her departed ex-husband. Drinking, keeping unsavory company that provided her with cathartic non-prescription pharmaceutical relief from the harsh realities of life — all in exchange for the low price as one dealer put it
“unparalleled access to her passport of the world.”
Luckily about six months into Michael’s mother descent into madness, Michael’s youngest sibling accidentally slipped in informing him what was happening at home. An accidental slip that led to one of his mother’s unsavory friends blackening his eye to a shade darker than midnight.
As was customary for Michael — being the son, the person, and believing in hope for hope’s sake — Michael stepped up and stepped in, moving his mother and younger siblings to Houston (2018).
While his siblings became settled into Houston and his mom quickly found work shortly after arriving — Michael attempted to continue to maintain life as as normal. His space became cramped, his organization fell out of whack, his mood slipped into despair, and his late night work on his dreams became replaced by late night work to maintain finances. Michael went from having a “9 to 5” and pursing a dream to having a “9 to 5” and a “5 to 9.”
Daily Michael spoke to his spirit refusing to allow his immutable soul refused to go down the path of drugs or alcohol, or otherwise be lured by despairs siren call.
But internally, Michael struggled… he struggled to balance:
The feeling of responsibility for others with the longing for personal freedom…
Hope for hope’s sake with the life’s vicissitudes and daily demands…
Dreams with obligation…
Rightful indignation with questions of ungratefulness…
Compassion and understanding for others situations and positions in life with life’s ticking time-clock…
A desire to leave the world or at least his life better than he entered life…
Through and through, each day Michael slipped further from himself. Tormented by thoughts agony unrequested responsibility. Fearing of the consequences to his immortal soul and sheerly having reverence for the life that gave him life, the world’s unrelenting weight and burdens piled on.
Soon, Michael’s desires and hopes became nothing more than thoughts and hopes of survival. Michael’s dreams was filed away in a drawer like a mad farmer’s mind.
Flash Forward — 2038 — Michael is now 51
The sands in the life’s hour glass slipped by; days became weeks and weeks became years — Michael grew old all while assuming the responsibility of a pseudo parent to his siblings.
Eventually, Michael’s mom passed away and siblings moved out.
Michael now older, having been promoted at his job to the head of his department — weathered the hills and valleys of life, left his second job, and resumed his life.
A few inches taller, a penny richer, now living in a condo. Michael sat in the living room — in his favorite leather chair, the chair that he always envisioned he would have when he “made it”. A pint of bourbon in hand, Michael sat in silence; he sat in evening’s glow streaming through the window and panned the room.
After sitting for what felt like entirety, a single tear left Michael’s eye — shortly, after water works started.
In a moment, Michael’s mind traversed time — jumping back over his life’s journey to recall T.S. Elliot’s words,
“I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, and I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, and in short, I was afraid.”
Michael thinking through his life’s journey felt a sudden rage wash over him, a burning flame that burned hot then the ambers of Dante’s hell…
and then…
and then…
A sudden sadness and despair.
Michael realized he sacrificed his dreams, his hopes, his desires for that of his family. He realized he gave up the immutable part of him that made him — him. The ability to dream, to succeed too fail.
Michael realized that each day he put off working on his dream…each day he made a decision to play superman…each day he toiled in silence — he took another step to what many would consider a good life but he considered a known hell.
Departing words —
Michael like the numbered and unidentified sea of millennials every day are change their circumstances. Attempting to break generational curses, end generational poverty, change society, be a good steward of the environment and their communities .
Many are trying to escape the psychological trauma’s and horrors of the confining halls of histories horrors.
Many are trying to change the crisis generation (millennials) never-ending onslaught of despair, war, and trauma.
All the while maintaining the status quo.
Michael’s story is mild compared to several of the individuals whose life contributed to its creation. In some — the father’s death is not a gradual descent into despair but end at the end of a .38. In others, the mother isn’t as luck to have a place or manner of escape.
In others, the children are taken away by children protective services only to be expose to untold horrors that make their previous life trauma’s pale in comparison.
However, different the result the same. A generation cries out in agony seeking to avoid repeating the mistakes of their parents; longing for a different future; and hoping for a brighter day….
Only to be torn and trapped by what seems to be inconceivably-eternally tied existential questions.
In the end, we millennials become #GenerationRepeat.
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