Thread by @sethanikeem

Your Gen X friends are not OK, especially if they were part of a counterculture, queer/queer adjacent, or otherwise marginalized by dominant white Christian society

Everything we fought against & everything stacked against us in our youth has returned with a vengeance & it hurts

This is not the world we were promised

But we’re Gen X, so we know promises are made to be broken. Catastrophizing comes as naturally to us as breathing

Despite that, we held onto hope, sought solace in art & music & stories; tried to make the world better

And we saw change

Not all of our friends made it

The mortality rate of Gen X is a demoralizing statistic

Those friends who made it through trauma, poverty, depression - well, some of them we lost to the constant & crushing propaganda. Some went so far left they came back out on the right

That kid in our class who died of bullying - we knew why they did it

Why the jocks always picked on them; why they were the target of cruel games like Smear the Qu**r

Even if we weren’t allowed a word for it, we knew

And we started to hope the world had changed …

Hope does not come easily to Gen X. We grew up at a time when we were told the world would end in global nuclear war. And that was a reasonable prognosis

Then there was acid rain, endangered species, AIDS & the hideous oppression of queer folk; the Satanic Panic

So much

But things changed & for a little while, we saw a glimmer of hope

Movements in our society making headway for equity, social justice, tolerance of different identities, practices, beliefs

It wasn’t perfect – far from it – it was a start

More than most ever dared hope for

But we also know promises are made to be broken. We know our system is the most broken promise of all.

We already lived through one man being fairly elected & another gaming the system to become president in his place

It’s so hard to believe our votes count for anything

Even so, we try

The Gen X folk in my circle, we know the world is a bleak & soul crushing hellscape where all the odds are stacked against anyone seeking to change it

Yet in the face of this, angry & glum, most still TRY - if only out of spite

But we are tired. Bone-weary

And I know I’m not alone in the feeling I’ve had over the past few weeks:

That all our efforts meant nothing

That we are forgotten, undone, erased

That we are right back in the repressive hellscape of our youth, only worse

That we’re too old to relive this fight

I don’t have a solution and I don’t have a point beyond check on your Gen X friends

Because we are the champions of hiding how severely fucked up we are - grinning & bearing it was literally beaten into most of us

And almost all of us at some point had an exit plan

(Elder Millennials & Xoomers from the punk scene are probably feeling this, too)

In case folks worry about me - I am weary to my very marrow

But I have a fantastic support structure: a loving found-family cobbled together from fellow misfits, outcasts & queers & my wife @ElyriaRose is the pillar of kindness I never believed I could have in my life ❤️

To the folks in here asserting that they are Gen X and they are not sad or exhausted, I think that’s great!

I hope you are prepared to take that energy and apply it to activism & grassroots work & civil disobedience because none of this is going to fix itself

This has gone unexpectedly viral and I just want to say how heartening it is to see the solidarity in responses

And I’m honestly shocked at the absence of trolls and shit-takes

Not sure how long that will last, but it’s a refreshing change

Given the number of retweets on this thread, there is a huge temptation to keep it going, but I said everything I really wanted to in the original posts

We’re not OK, but we’re in this together. What else do we do but soldier on?

Anyway, let me just say: thanks for reading