The millennials aren’t just angry. We’re fucking boiling.
Not the kind of anger that beats up people or smashes bottles. No. Ours is quieter. Heavier. The kind that sits in your gut like a stone and rots you from the inside.
We grew up being told to respect our elders. And we did. Dutiful little bastards, carrying their expectations like chains.
Then we became the elders, the parents, the so-called grown-ups. And what did the world tell us? That it was our job now to clean up the mess. To break the cycle. To heal the wounds we didn’t stitch in the first place. To suddenly become saints who wouldn’t pass on the poison we were force-fed.
So here we are. Angry. Very angry.
Not because we want to be, but because we’ve been denied the goddamn right to be angry in the first place.
We weren’t allowed to rage at our parents. “Let it go,” they said. We can’t rage at our kids. “Break the pattern,” they say. So we swallow it all down. We swallow and swallow until we’re choking on it. And now our insides are full of molten grief and fury, and one day it’s going to erupt like a volcano nobody asked for.
And where the fuck do we put it?
Into art. Into songs, scribbles, poems that bleed on the page, brush strokes that scream louder than our throats ever could.
Not because we think it’ll pay the rent. We fucking know it won’t. We’re not stupid.
We do it because it’s the only goddamn place where our feelings don’t get dismissed, don’t get laughed at, don’t get “critiqued.” Our art doesn’t ask us to calm down. It doesn’t tell us to smile more. It doesn’t roll its eyes when we confess we’re crumbling. It just… takes it. Holds it. Validates it.
So, if you ever meet a millennial, don’t give them advice, don’t tell them it’ll all be okay.
Just hug them. Hard.
And know this: There’s a chance they’ll crack wide open in your arms, because nobody ever gave them the space to fall apart without judgment.
We are angry because we never got to be. And that, right there, is the cruelest fucking joke of all.
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