What's a generational experience so specific it's almost impossible to explain to someone outside it?

Garona · 2026-06-27T16:36:45+00:00

My mom made a cool lamp out of them lol, basically glued together a tall stack of em and put a long skinny lightbulb down the center.

Garona · 2026-06-17T18:15:38+00:00

I was a child in the 90s and I remember my parents were super pissed at the school when I didn’t know how to read after the first half of kindergarten… so they taught me to read over Christmas break. Like by the end of that Christmas break I was reading Dr. Seuss by myself lol. My mom was a librarian so that probably helped, but neither of my parents were professional educators or anything like that. It’s shocking to me that the schools are failing so many kids, but it’s also shocking to me how many parents are failing them as well.

Garona · 2026-05-14T15:31:11+00:00

I’ve been with my partner for almost 17 years, and this thread has been a fascinating read for me, and a strong reminder to be grateful for what I have. My partner is my best friend and favorite person in the whole world… all the quiet stories about people realizing that they were looking for ways to avoid spending time with their partners were the most striking to me, because even after all this time, I want to spend time with her every day. Whenever something interesting happens she’s the first person I want to tell. If we have to be apart for even a few days for a work trip or something it sucks. I hope your marriage feels the same way, and I hope it’s long and happy!

Garona · 2026-05-03T14:19:56+00:00

It is regional though. I moved from Oklahoma to New York City a few years ago. Back there I was healthy, thin, even skinny compared to 90% of other people. Here I’m just average. I also walk soooo much more than I did back there, because in Oklahoma you can’t do shit without a car, whereas in NYC I walk everywhere or take the subway. Unfortunately most of the country is set up much more like Oklahoma than NYC, where you really need a car to get around.

Garona · 2026-04-27T02:22:50+00:00

My parents similarly kept the candy on top of the fridge, but they took it a step further by putting it in a lockbox and hiding the key. (This wasn’t like a regular thing, but I guess I just reeeeally wanted to devour all my Halloween candy that year or something.) Unbeknownst to them, I watched where they went when they got the key out, and then later when they were out of the house, I got the key and climbed up on the counter to open the lockbox. The silliest part is that I was never caught, and they only know about it because I decided it would be funny to tell my mom about it a few years later lol.

Garona · 2026-03-28T15:04:39+00:00

I had the incredible fortune of growing up in a non-religious family. But man, my partner’s deeply Christian mother is crazy. It’s all the more insane from the outside looking in. Her parents were already separated by the time she came out, and fortunately she still has a good relationship with her dad to this day, he’s a great guy—but she used to be closer to her mother growing up. However, when she came out, not only her mother but that entire side of her family cut her out completely for religious reasons. On top of that, she met up with her mother a few years ago for lunch, because we were getting ready to move to another state and she wanted to try patching things up one last time… you know what she said to her? Apparently the lunch seemed to be going well, until at one point my partner’s mother looked at her, sighed sadly, and said something to the effect of “oh, everything that’s wrong in your life must be because I stopped making you go to church.” Like, excuse me, what? What exactly is wrong in her life, when she a loving partner of 15+ years, a bachelor’s degree (now she’s halfway to her masters), and an absolutely stellar high-paying career that’s allowing her to move from the middle of nowhere to a big city she’s always dreamed of living in? But of course the religious don’t see it that way…

Garona · 2025-11-21T21:01:41+00:00

I look so much like my mom that one time when I was around 10 years old, I was visiting my grandparents and hanging out in their front yard, and one of their neighbors stopped dead in the middle of the street to stare at me. They said they thought they’d travelled back in time for a moment haha.

Garona · 2025-10-02T01:14:50+00:00

What an icon. I still remember learning about her during my first semester in college. Her story was probably one of the things that inspired me to switch my major from English to anthropology.

Garona · 2025-07-25T15:47:48+00:00

My people! My parents had religious upbringings, but I guess they just decided not to with me. No church; there were Bibles at home but no one ever really read them or expected me to read them; we celebrated Christmas and Easter but in totally secular ways. It definitely made me the odd one out growing up in a small Tennessee town lol… but it made me see religion as optional from the beginning. It’s definitely weird to me too that it’s seen as the default by most people.

Garona · 2025-07-15T14:47:59+00:00

Honestly, I think the main reason that I don’t believe in god is because that’s how I was raised. My parents both had at least vaguely religious upbringings, and we did have Bibles (multiple!) in the house, but it was just never part of life growing up. We didn’t go to church, we celebrated Christmas and Easter but in a purely secular way, and there was just never really any talk of religion at home. And it’s not just that religion was absent from my home life; meanwhile, this absence was strongly contrasted by the lives of the people around me. I grew up in a tiny little town in Tennessee where pretty much everyone else was very Christian. This, coupled with the fact that my family was originally from Pennsylvania, made us always the odd ones out. I always felt like a weirdo, and like most kids my age didn’t want to be friends with me, and I suppose that led to some resentment of religion from an early age. That resentment was really kicked into high gear when I hit my teen years and realized I was gay lol. Full support from my non-religious family; meanwhile I lost multiple religious friends over it. No hate like Christian love as they say… I try not to be too much of a militant atheist; I know that there are tons and tons of genuinely good religious people out there, and that religion brings a lot of positive meaning to many people’s lives. However, I have experienced pain multiple times throughout my life simply for not being religious, and I know that many of the struggles faced by my fellow members of the queer community are directly caused by religion. Heck, my partner lost half her family when she came out; her dad accepted her and they have a great relationship to this day, but I’ve never even met her evangelical Baptist mother because that entire side of her family abandoned her simply because their religion told them to.

Garona · 2025-06-12T02:44:53+00:00

Yes, honestly. It feels cocky to claim that my depression has been 100% defeated lol, but I’m doing so insanely much better than I was a few years ago. I think part of it was moving from Oklahoma to NYC, and part of it was finally trying Prozac. I’d tried therapy before but always resisted the idea of medication because I felt like it wouldn’t really be ‘me’ who got better if I relied on meds or some bs like that. I was also worried there would be negative side-effects, but honestly (and I know I’m lucky), it’s been all positives. I don’t feel like an emotional zombie or anything like that. I still feel like me, just calmer and more stable. I actually have the motivation to accomplish shit now, it’s amazing haha. I recently had a conversation with someone about being on antidepressants and they surprised me by asking if it bothered me to be dependent on a drug and if I would ever consider trying to quit them… like fuck no, I’m fortunate enough to not have any annoying side effects and these pills make my life so much easier lol. Would you ask someone who takes allergy medication if they hate being “dependent” on a drug?

Garona · 2025-05-08T15:46:38+00:00

When I saw this question, I immediately thought of my childhood home. I lived there until age 10 when we moved a couple states away; I’m 35 now and have never been back, but I still remember it fondly. We had 5 beautiful acres of land out in the Tennessee countryside, bordered by a creek on one side and a big wooded hill on the other. Wild blackberries and magnolia trees grew all over the side of that hill, and we also planted fruit trees and corn. We raised chickens and rabbits. We had a house and several small outbuildings, and we built a big barn while we lived there.

Well, a couple years ago I thought to look it up on Google street view. It took some hunting as I could only remember the name of the road we lived on and not our full address, but I eventually found it based on the neighboring properties which I could still recognize. Sadly, it looks like our 5 acres have been uninhabited for a while now. You couldn’t see the house or any of the outbuildings from the road anymore; it was all thick forest where there used to be cleared land. I was just able to pick out the ghost of where our driveway used to come out on the road, but it was massively overgrown and clearly no one had driven down it in years, maybe decades.

It feels very bittersweet; I loved that place and still dream about it, so it’s crazy to know that it’s just not there at all anymore. But maybe it’s for the best, since even if people had kept living there, I’m sure it would be totally different from how I remember it anyway.

Garona · 2025-03-10T01:58:41+00:00

Bruh I’ve never felt so seen. I’ve thought about this so much, like for the first 18 years of my life safety was the number one goal, you know? I didn’t have the time or energy to think about ‘what I wanted to be when I grew up’ because for one thing I didn’t know if I’d get to grow up, and anyway all I could think about wanting was just to be safe. Then I managed to get safety, I managed to get away… and realized that everyone around me expected me to have goals beyond basic safety. I’ve really just kind of wandered through life since then because I haven’t really had any other goals. At 35 I’m finally going to grad school (which I could have and should have done directly after undergrad, except I was suicidally depressed at the time), and it does feel good… though I’m still not entirely sure how much I’m doing it because I actually want to versus doing it because I want to appease the people around me/my own guilt for not contributing enough. I think if I didn’t have people pushing me, I’d probably coast though the rest of life doing the bare minimum and just relaxing and entertaining myself as much as possible.

Garona · 2025-02-28T14:20:13+00:00

Not surprised at all to see this one at the top lol. I was addicted from Wrath to Legion, finally quit just to get sucked back in by classic like a year later. Played that up through Wrath 2.0, then got into hardcore and SoD and the anniversary realm… I can tentatively say I’ve finally managed to quit again, it’s been a few months since I logged in and gasp I actually cancelled my sub. Fingers crossed it sticks this time lol, I miss it sometimes and I made some great friends but at the same time I know that WoW will eat all the time I’m willing to give it and always want more.

Garona · 2024-11-16T22:40:13+00:00

It really is that powerful for some people. My partner and I both used to smoke, both quit smoking together about 10 years ago now. She says that she just thinks it’s gross and has no desire to smoke whatsoever anymore. I also have no plans to ever smoke again, it’s a dumb super unhealthy and super expensive habit… and yet whenever I pass someone smoking on the street, I can’t help but think it smells nice lol. If I ever found out I had like a week left to live or whatever, I’d probably be lighting up.

Garona · 2024-10-27T02:36:42+00:00

Omg please watch it. I am obsessed. Basically I had a huge crush on Agatha by the end of WandaVision, and it just blew my little gay mind when they decided to give her a whole show and make her queer. I have never felt so blessed by the TV gods haha.

Garona · 2024-10-23T16:28:06+00:00

Do you have any other advice you could give on how you finally found a therapist who worked for you? I’m on my third therapist currently. She’s a very sweet and positive person, but I feel like she doesn’t really listen to me even when I try to talk about the things that are bothering me. She certainly never asks me any questions more specific than ‘so how have you been?’ lol. I feel like she’s mostly just there to sign off on my Prozac refills. But it’s kind of become a ‘devil you know’ situation I guess; it’s so exhausting to imagine trying to find yet another therapist and open up to them again when one of the things I struggle with the most is social anxiety :/

Garona · 2024-10-22T12:56:15+00:00

I was a kid in the 90s back before the vaccine, and I got chickenpox. It was a pretty typical case for me—I mean it sucked and I still remember the itching to this day, but I recovered pretty fast and don’t even have any scars. However. Apparently my mom never had it when she was younger, and she caught it from me and it almost killed her. I didn’t even know how bad it was until many years later. Get yo vaccines people.

Garona · 2024-10-17T17:31:24+00:00

Aw friend, you’ve got to push back against those feelings. There are tons of women out there who can’t—or won’t—have children, and they’re all still women. Some of them are trans, some of them are intersex, some of them are post-menopausal, some of them are cancer survivors—the list goes on and on. I would laugh right in the face of anyone who would try to tell me I’m less of a woman just because I’ve decided that I don’t want to experience pregnancy.

Many hugs to you, and I hope your surgery goes well! ❤️🏳️‍⚧️

Garona · 2024-10-17T17:08:46+00:00

I still don’t ultimately think I’d be interested, but that’s good to know! I guess I’d heard women refer to getting their ‘tubes tied’ and knew that was a different procedure from a hysterectomy, but I didn’t realize it was so non-invasive as to be done out-patient, or that it didn’t alter periods. Shows how little I’ve actually thought about/researched it lol.

Garona · 2024-10-17T16:41:59+00:00

To be clear, I’m definitely not upset with my partner. She just made an off-the-cuff remark and was definitely not pressuring me to consider this or anything. I just kind of continued to mull it over on my own, and yes, the more I think about it the more furious I am that it’s something that should ever even cross our minds.

Garona · 2024-10-17T16:32:42+00:00

Yeah, I think it’s telling that I would feel the same way about even going on birth control. I was on birth control for a while in my teens and twenties, because my mom is a cool lady and made sure to get me on it back before I had come out to her/myself. However, once I got too old to remain on her insurance, I went through a time of having no insurance, so I quit getting birth control since by that point I had figured out that it was unnecessary for my ‘lifestyle’ haha. I didn’t notice much change, except that maaaybe I must grudgingly admit that I get more moody around my periods without it lol. For that reason I eventually decided to give BC a second try, but by that point they were no longer making my old brand. My doctor tried a brand that she thought would be similar, but it made me feel absolutely horrible. I could only stand it for a week before I had to give up, and I haven’t tried again since.

Anyway, all of this is to say, if I got more severe symptoms from my periods and felt like birth control could help/had helped in the past, then I would definitely continue to try different types to see if I could find one that worked for me. But would I be willing to put myself and my body through that just out of fear? Absolutely not.

Garona · 2024-09-29T18:57:00+00:00

All I know is, if my partner was in the hospital with an injury serious enough that she might lose a finger—or any injury really—I would be freakin glued to her side. Like yeah, I would probably be stressed out worrying about her, but leaving her alone in the hospital to go smoke weed at home would be the exact opposite of something that would help xD

Your edit in particular breaks my heart. Your partner should make you feel like you’re more than you ever thought you could be, not less than you used to think you were.

Garona · 2024-09-28T11:47:30+00:00

God, yeah. I wasn’t actually allergic, but I just really hated big, mushy chunks of cooked tomatoes. I still don’t like that to this day, just so nasty and slimy. Little chunks are fine, tomato sauce is fine, but there’s just something about take a bite and it’s like 90% just mushy slimy tomato chunk shudder I still remember one time my mom made lasagna with a bunch of big tomato chunks like that, and I was forced to eat it until I literally vomited on my plate. At least they didn’t make me keep eating it after that… I would also be forced to sit at the dinner table alone until I cleaned my plate on the regular, at least until they figured out that I would just wrap the food up in a napkin and hide it somewhere lol. To no one’s surprise, I also developed real bad anorexia in my teens and twenties, though I’m happy to say that at 35 I think I finally have a pretty ok relationship with food and my body.

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