Sometimes I sit back and realize that my life, my entire timeline,has been bookmarked by chaos. As a millennial born in 1995, I’ve grown up with tragedy trending before “trending” was even a word. It’s wild to think that my earliest memories aren’t just personal. They’re historical. They’re world events that shaped not only the way we live, but the way we feel.
I remember 9/11 even though I was just a kid. The adults were crying, the news wouldn’t turn off, and for the first time, the world felt unsafe. I didn’t have words for it then, but I felt fear enter the air and never fully leave.
Then came the wars, Afghanistan, Iraq , always in the background. It was like the world was constantly on fire and we were told to “stay in school” and “focus on our future.” But how do you focus on your future when the adults in charge keep breaking it?
We saw the housing market crash in 2008, right as we were learning what “money” even was. Parents stressed. Homes were lost. College got more expensive. The dream got smaller.
And let’s not even talk about growing up with school shootings being so common that they became drills. The sound of a lockdown alarm in middle school changed all of us, even if we didn’t realize it.
Then the digital era exploded. Social media gave us connection and comparison, fame and anxiety, validation and emptiness. All in one scroll. We learned to smile for selfies while our mental health quietly collapsed under the pressure of being seen all the time.
We watched the planet burn…literally. Wildfires, melting ice caps, hurricanes on repeat. We grew up knowing our world was dying and our generation might not get the luxury of “retirement.”
Then came COVID. The global pause that wasn’t really a pause. Some people found themselves, others fell apart. We lost people, jobs, sanity. The world didn’t go “back to normal”. It just got weirder.
Sometimes I feel like being born in 1995 means inheriting an emotional hangover from every generation before us. We’re old enough to remember before the internet consumed us, but young enough to be trapped inside it now. We’ve seen recessions, riots, reckonings, revolutions… all before 30.
And it does suck sometimes.
Because we’ve been constantly told we’re “resilient,” but resilience starts to feel like exhaustion in prettier clothes.
We’re tired of surviving history.
We just want to live a little of it…the peaceful parts.
But maybe that’s what makes us special. We’ve witnessed the world unravel and still found reasons to romanticize our coffee, laugh with friends, dance in our kitchens, and keep believing in something better.
Because even after everything, the fear, the loss, the chaos, we still have hope. And that’s its own quiet kind of rebellion.
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