What it’s like to stand in the Sliver of the Spotlight on Gen X

I’ve written less in the past five years than I did previously in my life, and yet more ideas, memories, experiences to share have been pressing from within me outwards.

Right now I am living at the edge of an extra-weird zeitgeist: I’m Gen X, and people have suddenly remembered I and my feral, drug-addled, ADHD late-diagnosed, overworked, underslept, caring for elders and younger at the same time cohorts exist. We are collectively annoyed by this, but here we are. I am at the age where I am subject to youth-towards older agism online, and older-to-younger agism in person (like many Gen Xers, it’s a little harder to pinpoint in person) and assumed conservatism by the up and coming Gen Zs and assumed liberalism the way they define liberal from Boomers.

I’m estranged from my blood relatives and somewhere between relieved and sad at how many other people, especially women, near my age have also struggled with narcissistic mothers and siblings and flying monkey extended family, that have had to make the choice to go no-contact because of the way those toxic relationships and entitlements eroded health for our own families of choice. I only wish we had found healthier ways to talk to each other about these struggles sooner, but the open discussion of boundaries and what healthy relationships look like, and how toxic families tend to try to force you into an idenity that serves them, started with the younger Millennials that older Gen Xers raised.