From78

Yesterday, I saw someone wearing a baggy black sweater and distressed jeans. This put my brain gremlins to work. They pulled several files into my consciousness.

The files contained many memories of being with friends at a small café and/or at Denny’s in the mid-1990s. In these memories, it was winter, and indoor spaces were filled with cigarette smoke. (This was when people could still smoke indoors.) Lots of people were dressed in a style that was similar to the person I had just seen. This was the height of the grunge era, and many people dressed in baggy sweaters, flannel shirts, jeans, and well-worn footwear to show how aligned they were with the fashion zeitgeist of the time.

The memory fades, and I start to think about it.

I notice a few things:

I notice that at this point in my life, when I look back to the 1990s, I see a lot of struggle. I was struggling. Many of the other people around me were struggling as well. We were young and had not established ourselves professionally or economically. We were living our lives in a space between our families of origin and the families we would create, a liminal zone where friendships and community serve as a kind of family structure, even though there are no ties of marriage or genetics binding people together. We didn’t know much about ourselves or the world we lived in. (At the time, many of the people I hung out with and I would not have admitted to this. We were prone to presenting ourselves as people who did know who and what we were because we were authentic and had yet to be corrupted by an accumulation of experiences that would beat us down and blunt our young jagged edges.)

As I savored these associations, a new thought came to me: I was struggling, and those around me were struggling, but we were struggling together. That shared struggle is something I long for as I look back on it.

Past me who lives in my perks up.

“You think struggle is desirable? You think my struggle is quaint? Fuck you!” The version of past me that lives in my head says to me now. Past me, the one who lives in my head, wants to punch me now in the face. Hard.

“Hold up,” I say to past me. “I know… well… I remember how hard this feels for you. I don’t miss that feeling. You probably won’t believe me because you feel so alone, isolated, and misunderstood, but many people around you are going through their own version of this. You hang out with them often. Even though you can’t see it when you’re going through the struggle, there is a collective aspect to this, along with the singular aspect that is yours alone.”

Past me makes an obscene gesture. He wants none of what I’m saying.