Let no one despise you for your youth, but set an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.
1 Timothy 4:12
Let’s talk about something I’m really good at, which is crying in my car.
My earliest memory of this was at Walmart, because if you’re going to cry in your car then the Walmart parking lot seems fitting. 50 points if there’s an empty styrofoam cup on the ground next to the cart stall and a weird couple making out a few spaces down.*
I was on my way out, when I passed the in-store Subway and heard a small, familiar noise to my right followed by a murmured “oh!”. I looked. There sat two ladies: one, a middle aged woman in denim shorts and a dotted shirt, the other an elderly woman, likely in her nineties, in a floral top who just spilled her drink. My eyes started stinging and I headed for the doors.
Fun fact about me...a great way to get me to start crying immediately is if I witness an elderly person spill their drink.
I wish I could blame this on virtue but in reality it’s a complicated thing sitting at the pit of my heart strings. The root is empathy, however it’s all buried under a tangle of immature emotions. This is a person who has lived a whole life. She is someone worthy of dignity, basic human respect, and a trip to Subway accompanied by a loved one without incident. They will both forget this by tomorrow. Through all the tiny expressions and micro reactions I could gather enough—embarrassment, a moment of confusion, quiet frustration at aching joints.
Worst of all—and hopefully unnoticed—a bystander who looked at her with pity.
Perhaps it’s at the risk of assuming too much about this whole event...but sometimes we just want people to see us. To drop their assumptions for at least a moment and remember that we are human beings.
I made it to the car and stared at the ceiling, willing the tears to stay put. No one needs Eric Carmen hot-mess energy today, there’s too much to do. Get it together, Phillips.
There was a second time I cried in my car, much later, but the reasons were different.
I had just walked out of urgent care after the actual longest day, firmly grasping the end of my rope. It was 8 pm, I had been running since 6:30 am, and I still had a half hour drive to get home. After two hours of waiting rooms, chest x rays, breathing treatments and a 75$ copay I couldn’t afford, I had an ending diagnosis that the bronchitis I had been fighting for two months had finally turned into walking pneumonia. Which is just terrible, because I felt like death but sick leave was not something I had access to. Even if I did, it was going to take weeks to even feel functional again. It was only Wednesday, and even if it was a Friday it’s not like I would be able to sleep much before the alarm interrupted 6 am again.
It happened when I sunk down into the driver's seat. Before I could even turn the key my body launched into another violent coughing fit, complete with watering eyes, burning rib pain, and no room to cross my legs. There wasn’t time for a bathroom break since at least 4, and as I struggled to breath I felt a horrific and vulnerable sensation.
I finally coughed so hard that I peed my pants.
Even though I was alone, I might as well have been stripped of my clothing and left shivering in my underwear. I was skinned of any dignity I had left. If this is how it felt to be in your 90s, spilling your drink in front of a misunderstanding observer, then it was just awful.
I slumped, staring blankly at the dashboard while the fresh batch of tears dripped down my face and off my chin. I didn’t wipe them away. Why bother.
The chain of events that led me here is long and boring to anyone who didn’t have to live them. The thing I worked toward for 5 years just crashed and burned, punctuated by a scathing review of my performance that I probably deserved but had no ideas left of how to fix. Everything, and I mean everything, in my hometown was falling apart. I didn’t have health insurance. I was either three or six credit hours away from finishing my degree, depending on what the powers that be who held a lit match to my diploma decided. One of those powers hated me, because my teacher yelled at another teacher, about me, very loudly. Everyone knew. I couldn’t physically go back, because of that and because I had a job I couldn’t give up thanks to loan payments that arrived in full force during a horrific recession. A number of my friend group was under the impression that I had simply gone crazy, and then went home. I would soon be informed that, after draining the rest of my savings to an actual zero dollars, I couldn’t take the class I needed to graduate—too late for refunds, gosh, so sorry. In addition, the only advisor available to me would have a massive heart attack, need extensive recovery time, and there’s no not-rude way to ask what I’m supposed to do in that situation. That was when I realized if you were stressed out enough, you could periodically break out into hives. And oh, by the way, since I waited until the next semester before broaching the subject because I understood that heart attacks require a decent amount of recovery time, the school would drop me as a student but benevolently allow me to re-apply—no guarantees, though, I’m not special.
Months later, when I did reapply, they would lie about my payment status and threaten to drop the class if I didn’t pay again, which counted double would be $4000.00 I didn’t even remotely have. So that’s fun. **
I gained a new appreciation for people who have seen the buttcrack of rock bottom and still manage to get out of bed every day.
The point of this isn’t reread a sad chapter that’s ten years closed while sending out invitations to my backdated pity party. At the time, I was trying to just accept whatever was next while jumping through a multitude of hoops. I knew life wasn’t supposed to be fair. I knew other people had problems too. I was stepping up to the plate, even though the pitcher had a monster of an arm. Meanwhile, the news had a lot to say about me.
“Millennials are killing the diamond industry.” “Why won’t millennials move out?” “The ‘Me’ Generation—What’s Next?” “College should be free, says spoiled twenty somethings.” “Obama just extended health coverage for dependents to age 26, hogwash says bystander.”***
None of the headlines were good. Everyone still believed them.
So I sat there, tears gradually drying and my seat getting cold, trying to remember where I could pick up upholstery cleaner with the remaining 30 dollars I had in my bank account. The tremendous weight of all the fingers pointed my way was unwavering—insisting that I was stupid, selfish, lazy, disrespectful, entitled, that I didn’t know how to have a face to face conversation, that I couldn’t speak professionally, that I couldn’t do anything for myself, all because I had committed the sin of being in my twenties. Holding grief about any of this just meant that I wasn’t taking responsibility for myself and that I wanted attention.
I didn’t want victimhood; I just wanted a taste of humanity. I wanted to be seen. I wanted the pearl clutchers to let go. I wanted loved ones to stop looking at me like I was crazy when I told them what I was trying to figure out. I was so tired of people assuming they knew the depths of my character because they watched a Simon Sinek video. Even those who claimed to be sympathetic didn’t understand why I was angry and tired, even though I was watching in real time every single aspect of my life slip through my fingertips like sand.
Asking for basic human respect shouldn’t come at the emotional expense of my entire backstory.
The media and all its fingers won that night. In a way, so did I. It took stained jeans and a fist grasping three prescriptions to stop giving a damn what any generation said about any other generation.
Perhaps someone could argue that I and some others are the exception to the stereotype. The more young people I listen to, the more I realize that I am the rule. However, before you quit reading in the assumption that this is all about hating on Boomers, know this: the Boomer’s opinion that mattered was on the other end of the phone that night. My mom.
She simply laughed with me when I admitted that I looked ridiculous and believed me when I said this was hard. She maintained my humanity and didn’t even have to do it on purpose.
…I’m sorry that the pressures of living have made it so easy to elevate any generation by tearing down another. I’m sorry that it’s cyclical. I’m sorry that there is a perceived need for that—insisting that your youth was better, that you actually had quality whatever, that you were spanked as a child and that made you a better person. But if we have hope for bridges, know that it isn’t going to come from reduction. It comes from relation, from common ground, from leveled eyesight, from seeing. It comes from people like me, and like my mom.
You could learn a lot from her, you know.
Footnotes:
* Don’t look at me like that. You aren’t too good for Walmart.
** Before you assume it was a misunderstanding, just know that it took 4 calls, 3 different contacts, 2 faxed receipts, and a half hour arguing over the phone to convince them otherwise.
***If you are asking, no, I wasn’t eligible for that either. The companies involved found a convenient loophole for themselves.
