Some videos I have been watching and commenting on over on YouTube have got me thinking Gen X thoughts.

Every generation starts where the previous one left off, even though they neither know it or do it on purpose, and Gen X started where the Boomers ended.

And where they ended was bad. Very bad.

Their youthful exuberance started in the psychedelic 60’s but ended in the Age of Disillusionment. aka the 70’s, and that’s when a lot of us X’ers were born.

The 70’s saw the tie-dyed pie=eyed drug-fueled hippie revolution turn into the social apocalypse that followed. Drugs ran rampant and destroyed lives on an industrial scale , because much to the shock of the hippies, it turned out that drugs are bad, mmkay?

All those hippies came down from the high to find their lives destroyed, often along with their bodies, and many of them came out of it with crippling addictions to things like heroin or morphine.

And because of this explosion in the number of junkies, a tidal wave of crime followed as millions of former hippies had habits to feed.

Throw in Vietnam, Nixon, pollution, inflation, OPEC, poverty, and the stress of trying to start a family amidst all this degradation, and the hippies came to a very bad end. They saw all their great big psychedelic dreams turn into absolute dogshit, and their peace love and harmony turn into cheap thrills and street crime.

Oh, and the divorce rate also skyrocketed as the spoiled and cranky Boomers decided they didn’t feel like being married any more.

So they weren’t.

And that’s the milieu into which we were born. It’s like we of the subsequent generation absorbed the Boomer’s newfound cynicism and disillusionment with our mother’s milk and it became foundational to our entire worldview.

So we inherently distrust big dreams and grand schemes and societal machines. We have a natural immunity to hype and drama and idealism. We grew up with absolutely no illusions about drugs or music or anything else.

We had to deal with the harsh realities the Boomers had created by refusing to face reality for half a generation.

Remember, folks, reality always wins.

I will never forget the conversation I had on IRC with a bunch of ex-hippie Libertarian types where they couldn’t wrap their minds around the fact that I didn’t trust ANYBODY.

Not government, not religion, not corporations, not education, not charities, not the shining idiots on the TV, and definitely not our selfish Boomer parents.

The same parents that had kids without realizing that kids actually have their own needs and desires that could potentially impinge on the Boomers’ precious freedom and autonomy and prerogatives, and clearly that was unacceptable.

I’m sorry, but I didn’t know having kids would mean less for ME.

So instead of being real parents, they just did whatever the hell they wanted to do and us offspring had to just fit ourselves in whenever and often basically raise ourselves.

Hence being the latchkey generation. The first (and in many ways last) generation to grow up without a full time parent. To come home to absolutely nobody and be left to fend for ourselves at least until suppertime.

To never have anyone to turn to when you needed a parent because they were busy and what they were doing was far more important than you are and really, they’re doing this all for you, so just shut up and leave mommy and daddy alone, OK?

And we did. And then they wondered why we grew up to hate them.

Maybe that’s changed now. Maybe it can no longer be assumed that kids will grow up to hate their parents, at least for a while.

After all, kids aren’t raised by Boomers any more.

I’d like to think we did a better job, at least a little.

More after the break.

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The Therapy Thursday Report

Today’s session was pretty good.

We talked about how I have spent most of my life staying in my bedroom most of the time because that’s the only place I felt “safe”.

When I was a kid, it meant I was “safe” from my family and the pain of being ignored or feeling like I wasn’t even there or the anxiety of dealing with people in general, which I now recognize as stemming from feeling like everyone was always at least a little bit pissed off at me.

Back then, that was normal. I lived with a constant background of people’s annoyance. And that extended from my mother through my siblings and all the way to my teachers.

Nobody really wanted me around because I was such a gross pathetic mess. It is painful to be around someone like that. And disgusting.

The difference is that someone in my home life should have taken it upon themselves to get me to clean up and pull myself together so that I was at least inoffensive.

But I was the Christmas puppy, the cute kid who everyone got tired off and then nobody wanted to take care of me or bear any responsibility for me whatsoever.

Like a big dumb smelly dog who doesn’t know why he never gets pets any more.

Another thing that came up during today’s session was the idea of trying to fixate on my pre-rape self when I was a very happy, charming, adorable kid who was often the center of attention wherever I went without even trying and whom everybody loved.

I can be that person again. Well, an adult version of him, anyhow.

That’s the person I was supposed to be before that evil man raped me. And it’s the person I can be again once I rid myself of all these demons and learn to stand up and shake off my fears and face the grown-up world head-on.

Hopefully without whimpering.

I know that I have to rescue and resurrect that very large part of me that is still back in that shower stall where I was raped.

I need to heal him and the wounds he carries, and that won’t be easy or fun.

But I am working on it.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.