We are an unmoored generation.
We move. We gypsy about. We buy tiny houses and float from one hipster city neighborhood to another. Never feeling quite right. Never embracing a sense of place.
I think we are looking for an emotional home.
The emotional safety supposedly proffered by families doesn’t happen in reality, only on television.
The emotional safety of friends in TV shows about young adults also fails us as we find friends taking advantage of our better natures, finances, and willingness to give of our time.
The emotional safety of religion and belief never existed, a fact that we know all too well as we see spiritual leaders take advantage of the weak and easily-convinced. We float in and among beliefs, nothing the weaknesses of each. We see incoherent verses with contradictions and science striking holes in tenets. We float, and then fall squarely in the face of agnosticism and atheism, or we play-act at religion, not wanting to admit that we are agnostic or atheists even to ourselves out of fear of what that might mean.
We can’t have bars as homes—no “Cheers” type situation in a generation all-too-aware of the dangers of chronic alcohol abuse and with too little extra funds leftover to spend regularly on a happy hour.
We go to college and some of us take this on as a “home” for a while, and even afterward, but that fades with time and nostalgia wears into reality and we remember the things that weren’t so good in a new and different light.
We buy property and second-guess the decision. Sell, downsize, become more mobile. Minimize our belongings so we can make a quick escape from our work, our town, if we choose.
Relationships don’t clear up the matter either. We know that people in the past were just as inconstant, and that nothing certifies a relationship as not having an expiration date, even if we do not wish it to. We hear of the affairs grandpa had, or how grandma always pretended at the happy housewife even as she debated poisoning the tea. We hear about how people made marriage and relationships “work” – but at a soul-removing or spirit-crushing cost to themselves. We hear of people married several times. We hear of relationships lasting 30 years only to end when someone abruptly decides they have had enough.
We get into relationships and keep our separate apartment, keep a backup plan, keep a storage unit for “my” stuff.
We keep our eyes and ears peeled, knowing the smallest crack can shatter the windshield.
We have put up with people doing things, small things, starting slowly over time … just to make us be the bad guy and end it first because they didn’t want their own version of themselves to be besmirched.
We have had “nice guys” or “nice girls” turn out to be sociopaths.
We have taken running leaps at relationships, had them fail, and, in a fit of nostalgia, run at them again, years later. Still failing to find the answer. To find anything of value.
We buy pets. Grieve like a banshee when they die. Because that is really all there is.
Or we overwork, allow ourselves to be underpaid, finding meaning where we can. We delve into hobbies that promote social concepts we can’t get elsewhere… “Sisterhood,” “fellowship,” “bonding.” Until we run out of funds or effort for them or the interest runs dry, and our souls feel raw and empty from the experience.
We are destined to die alone. Because we know, deep down, everyone dies alone. Even in a room full of people. You live in your own head. And that is all. You can see into no one else’s to verify what might be.
There is no emotional home.
There never was.
Spiked Peaches- A tilted view from the South 