Few People That I Grew Up With Got Anywhere In Life
I’m completely disturbed by how I just assumed everyone would figure it all out by the time they became adults
I think this is the most lost generation that’s ever existed.
To be clear, I’m talking about millennials. I can’t remember the exact age range off the top of my head, but if you were a teenager between 2005–2012 I think you basically qualify.
Let me start by saying I grew up in a good ass neighborhood. I never saw violence, despite living in Southern California in Los Angeles county. I grew up in Burbank. I went to John Muir Middle School and Burbank High School. Both perform well academically, (or at least they did when I was a student).
I knew lots of driven, mild-mannered people. There were some wannabe thugs but they never really did anything. I only recall seeing a few pregnant girls at high school. And there were some loose girls (notice I separate this from pregnant), but even the loose girls were smart and opinionated, despite prioritizing boys over academia.
Most of my friends grew up in the suburbs. There’s no real sketch neighborhood in Burbank, and neighboring Toluca Lake and Glendale are only marginally less safe than Burbank. I hope I’ve driven my point home that while my family life was a bit awkward, the environment around me was nothing short of clean and proper.
You’d assume those kids grew up to become something great, and they followed their dreams through, and went to university and are now engulfed by a bustling, promising career and/or married to the love of their life.
After spending a few years on/off snooping about my classmates’ current lives, I couldn’t be more wrong.
Only a fraction of them really went anywhere. Not shaming people who wind up in minimum wage jobs, but sheesh. I knew these kids. They seemed chipper at school. They did their homework. They had extracurricular activities and hung out with their friends.
I don’t recall bullying being a problem at all at my high school or domestic/parental abuse in the area, but some of these people really turned out just kinda…beaten down. I can’t explain it. Like they…
