The View from a Quarter-Way Down (2025)

I don't want to turn 20.

For a lot of people, especially here on account of the likely higher average age, since most people my age don't really play Doom let alone interact with a forum about it, turning 20 was probably an exciting time. It probably brings back memories of simple work with relatively short pay, of starter cars, starter apartments, starting with life. Potentially people here were in higher education when they turned 20. Maybe some people were outright performing their trade to this day, in unbroken process from that time.

I don't have any positive memories to attach to turning 20. I understand that we have come out of a milieu of what can be considered "forced positivity". I can tell that through especially the periods between about 2016 unto around 2022, everyone seemed pained, extremely pained, and everyone seemed to abide by a code of mutual positivity in spite of the rise in the cost of living, geopolitical tomfoolery, and eventually a fucking pandemic and subsequent economic turmoil. But now, coming out of that hell, it has been made clear - I feel - to most, if not everyone of all walks of life, that not only are they stronger than they initially believed, but equally so can they be tolerant towards even bitter and angry cynicism. And that is what I'm here to do, I am here to air my cynicism and anger and bitterness towards my age and my life and the circumstances which. I encourage anyone of the same disposition to express themselves, in order to fix an issue you must first diagnose it, and bringing forth to air your concerns I'd say are the first and foremost way to begin diagnosing your issues.

I understand that people here, on this very forum no less, have gone through horrible shit. Loss of houses, loss of parents. I'm thankful to say that I haven't had that much loss in my life. I am blessed to still have a family, every day I am thankful for them - they are all I have in my life. I am thankful for the roof over my head, I live in the ghetto amongst many homeless people. I wish I could help them, but the world is not that simple, nor can you afford to be that gracious when you have little to yourself even. I am thankful for the food in my stomach. I have "beaten obesity", cutting my weight from 200lbs in February of 2022, to 140lbs in December of 2022. I have since then starved, legitimately and earnestly starved to the point of ailment, entirely due to circumstance. I am thankful for every meal I have.

But I want to say that equally so, being born in 2005, and living in fucking Canada, is Hell. It is a special type of Hell, the Truman Show Hell. Today, I went to my local grocer. A NoFrills-brand grocer. NoFrills is owned by Loblaws. Loblaws, along with Sobeys and Metro, they own pretty much every grocery store in this fucking country. There are exceptions, a local produce grocer sells produce on the cheap. But otherwise? Today, I spent $40. That $40 got me two and a half pounds of ground meat, a gallon of milk, a bag of six or so yellow onions, a head of cauliflower, a quite small amount of ground coffee, and a small packet of chili powder. Relatively speaking, that is quite a good deal. But I probably didn't buy two and a half pounds of ground meat; Loblaws has been noted (very recently, mind you) to weigh the packaging with the meat. That milk was price-fixed, they've done it before. They will never be forced to compensate us for these things, they will never be made by the institutions meant to protect us to stop their practice. They will continue to tread and stomp on us as parliament watches in delight.

The life of someone born after about 1990 west of the Atlantic, east of the Pacific, and for the most part north of the Rio Grande - born in Canada or the U.S., and coming of age around 2008 and later - can be considered a massive joke. The windup is how life is portrayed. We're told firstly that we should be thankful we were born here, that warts and all we should be glad that we have these insitutitions that keep us free. We are told to immediately put our faith and trust in the process, in the man made institutions of courts and parliaments, and houses stocked full of senators and the like, as if they are Holy, as if they are perfect and of the status of God - unable to do injustice, especially upon her own people. We get sat down with media portraying firstly our youthful life, we are shown to have friends, we are shown to grow into our adolescence and enjoy our day in social cliques. Then, we are to graduate, and go into college. From our labours in education we are then to enter a white-collar profession, or with some flexibility, a trade of their choice. Then, we are to "work hard" - which, at this point, meant waking up at 6am and going to work for 8 whole hours - for 40 or so years, retire at 65, and enjoy the sunset of our lives.

So then, where is the punchline? The punchline has been how reality has played out versus these fantastical expectations.

I was born, if you can remember, in 2005. That means that upon my conception, upon the very initial creation of the DNA that is running through each cell in my body, 9/11 was history. To me? There was no time where air travel was easy, it was always cavity-search city. To me? The "bad guys" were never Russian, only random brown gentlemen speaking quite loudly. When I was three, the 2008 financial crash happened. I never even intelligently knew a world before the economy was fucked. When I was fifteen, Covid happened. I had just started high school. And then immediately, boom, dunzo, no more high school until the final fucking semester of my school career in early 2022. Time and time again, things kept happening.

And none of these things are good things either if you're young. Why would any young person want the world to be full of fear? Why would any young person want the world to be in economic free-fall? Why would any young person want to give up most of their high school years and social growth?

Why would any young person want to come of age in a world like this?

So, everything is unaffordable and the world keeps fucking up. But surely I can find happiness elsewhere, right?

Such as?

Friends? No bueno. Nobody makes friends anymore. People my age have the most fucked up sense of "friendship" you can imagine. Can you imagine being told by someone that you're "traumadumping" 20 years ago? At what fucking point does the basic human action, of listening to someone's problems, when does that become such a high bar that barely anyone can pass? When does a violation of that bar you set... when the fuck did that become a significant breach of boundaries? Us young people have this idea that we need to be "perfect" for whoever we find ourselves in a relationship - both friendly and romantic. Now, it's only fair we view it like that because we also expect perfection out of our potential friends. I have not seen anyone my age, including myself, express flexibility towards their relationships. Everyone is ready to immediately blow the bridge up, and swandive into the rushing waters praying they don't come into contact with a rock.

This isn't to mention, dear God, we're fucking broke! No, Steven, because you were making $7 an hour in 1997 does not mean that my point is moot. Your $7 an hour put gas in the tank, a roof over your head, food on the table, and shit, a little bit of beer in the fridge and a bud or three in your pocket. Where the fuck does my $15 an hour get me? Three hours of labour just to get a gallon of milk, some meat, some onions, some fucking coffee, and some damn chili powder. We can barely afford food, we can barely afford to move out. The only time you seen anyone my age get ahead, get a nice car, get a house of any kind beyond a shitshack with 2 other roommates - I have yet to meet someone my age or even a few years older who lives on their own - is when you have access to the mythical-tier item, the Bank of Mom & Dad.

Who wants to be friends with a person who has no car, no place of their own, no fucking money, like it's pretty obvious why so many of us are alone - we're fucking losers! A generation of goddamn losers! And it's all our fault. It's our fault that rent costs have gone sky-high. It's our fault utilities are owned by more fucking monopolies and we pay the highest bills in the goddamn world for some of the shittiest service - seriously, I've been lied to by my one out of two available telecommunications providers! It's our fault that food costs your firstborn son! It's our fault that a fucking Whopper Jr costs $4! It's our fucking fault that all these jobs ain't fucking hiring!

And none of this gets acknowledged. Nobody gives a flying fucking rat's ass. And you know what? Everyone else is "entitled" to do so - I absolutely loathe that word, by the way. But I insist, let's just rip the bandage off and have a little moment where we acknowledge the quiet part: I am by, society's metrics, undeserving of the very life I have been given. "Why do you say these things?" Because I have no job. I live by my mother's grace, bless her heart. I lost my last job - something about pissing too many times, and telling some goof I was working with that I like men, the official documents said "NO REASON" but I'm deciding to relay what my boss decided to say to me. I got told to fuck off from welfare too, because I could've "reasonably held that job". I didn't work enough hours for unemployment. Most of my employment has been under-the-table.

Dollar Tree, Dollarama, Burger King, McDonalds, multiple fucking bottle depots, and so many more places also know my availability, my Class C first-aid training, my work tickets, and my experience.

They don't want me there, probably because they don't like how my name sounds nor how my graduating year looks. After this many months, what else could it be?

Do you know what life feels like for me? And probably for most people my age as well? That book Logan's Run. We get to live for about 18 to 20 years in skibidi scrolling paradise, we have all the entertainment of the world at our fingertips, and yet, we must come to the carousel for our renewal. We must throw ourselves basically out of any sort of security, and into the shit. And all the while, we have people who were privileged enough to merely walk out of security, into slightly less security upon a boat that sailed them across the shit-sea that I and my cohort find mouth-deep, talk to us like they were in the shit, that they know what this shit is like. It's silly sometimes - you had a job? Cause you had to survive? Oh shit, me too, but I lost my fucking job and I'm still scraping by. You were lucky enough to have a boss that turned a blind eye to your shit, and had rent so low you could actually afford to save. Not like me, where I put 7% of my cheques into my savings every damn week and by the next paycheque I'm skimming some out to afford food.

I don't like the view from a quarter of the way down.

The View from a Quarter-Way Down (2025)
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