Yes it is me, it’s nice to meet you. Allow me to introduce myself, for I am the so called “spoiled, selfish, lazy millennial”. The last generation that had a childhood without tablets, the last one to actually play outside. The one born between 1981 and 1997 all those articles slander.
Except, that I am the other side of the coin. I am the one no one wants you to know about because that definition doesn’t fit me, because I am the furthest thing from spoiled, selfish and lazy. I’m not into situationships, I’m not the one partying every weekend, I’m not the one hooked on instagram likes. I don’t waste my time chasing pants and zippers because I am too busy trying to keep myself above the water. I’m the first one of my family to go to college, I’m the one who works part time during the weekends, and spends my spare time chasing opportunity. I repeat, I’m the young woman and the young man no one tells you about. The one who recently got an award for giving excellent customer service, the one that’s an activist and created a solid online platform on sharing knowledge to fight oppression, the one that’s on that track field day and night to make a chance at the olympics, the dancer with the swollen feet trying to perfect her moves, the one who is researching pediatric care for her thesis, I’m out here, you hear me? I’m out here.
The media, has done a clever job manipulating my image. The Baby Boomers and the Generation X’ers have chewed up my name and spit me out like they had nothing to do with my upbring, or as if I am not merely a product of an environment they created. At this point, I am basically a celebrity and all the media does is focus on my bad parts. Is this what Kim Kardashian feels? When she’s just out there minding her business and living her life, when she makes headlines by just breathing?
There are days where I think these times I am living in are a joke, except that I do not find it in the least bit funny. While I do have Facebook, Instagram and Twitter I am very aware it is one more tool to distract me. I am aware that they want me glued to trash reality TV and netflix series so that I don’t follow my own dreams. There’s a reason the radio is filled with music with lyrics that hold no meaning, there’s a reason all the educational shows are gone, there’s a reason everything that was wholesome has been replaced by hype’s. The matrix is out to get me and I am not having it. You want me to lose aim, you want me to be a sheep and follow all this collective ignorance but I’m not falling asleep anytime soon.
Poet, inter-sectional feminist, Media and Communications student and creative writer.