I am not afraid to say that I will be 40 on my next birthday. I have never bought into the antiquated notion that women have expiration dates and only have worth until some arbitrary age is reached, so there it is. I'm 39. For my entire adulthood I have known myself to be part of Gen X. So imagine my surprise, when scrolling through some internet news recently, I discovered by some charts I am also considered a Millennial.

To be sure, few generational cohorts outlining the Millennial generation start as early as 1977, my birth year, but even without digging too deep I found one that began in 1976 and another in 1979. Even knowing the rarity of these charts, I was mildly shocked. I had honestly thought the end of Gen X and beginning of Millennial was well marked, with perhaps more questions clouding its end point than beginning. It just never occurred to me to question my generational group. And to be frank, I don't want to be a Millennial.

This resistance to being grouped with Millennials does not stem from the general lack of respect that the Millennial generation is "known" by. Rather, it comes from being at the tail end of my own generation, and thanks to the course of the last 15-20 years of history, having a unique window by which I can observe both the older generations and the younger. Millennial friends, I say this with all honesty, sympathy, and not a lick of sarcasm: it really sucks to be you.

I am ecstatic that I'm not a Millennial. I honestly do not know how Millennials are going to do it, because I know for a fact they've been handed a sack of crap and told to make a diamond out of it. Perhaps this will cheer them: the gentlemen who originally coined the term "Millennial" also claim there are four rotating generational archetypes, and that the Millennial Generation most closely resembles "The Greatest Generation." This archetype is considered the most civic minded and socially fearless. The irony for me was reading that the Greatest Generation gave birth to the Baby Boomers, who seem to be at such constant odds with Millennials.

It should not be surprising to be that this is my chosen topic to write about on the 15th anniversary of September 11. Our nation changed that day and not for the better, in the long run. Things almost instantly got crazy, and have declined ever since. I'm sure there are talking heads out there that can point to charts and graphs and show me "facts" that will "prove" things have been getting better, but forgive me if I call bullshit. I grew up in middle America, both geographically and socioeconomically. I remember my childhood, and while we had our tough times, I grew up in the 80s and 90s and absolutely understand the obsessive nostalgia. Those days seem almost charmed compared to now. I was a young adult when the 9/11 attacks happened. I remember what America was like before, and while it was not perfect, yes it was better than now.

Which is why it must really suck to be a Millennial in today's New America. You guys have a tough row to hoe. I know this because while I'm Gen X, I'm on the younger end of the scale and my group didn't completely miss the ferry to Suck Town either. But we at least had enough time to grab onto a life vest, if we were smart. Millennials have just been tossed into the frothy, choppy water from the get-go and are struggling to stay afloat.

Ten years makes a huge difference. It might not seem so, but ten years can swing a pendulum in wild directions. My brother is nine years older than me and by the time 9/11 happened, his group of the Gen X generation had the time to claw out some footholds. A decade later, when my group bringing up the rear of Gen X came along, we had just started chipping away at the cliff face when the storm of 9/11 came. That storm has raged ever since, gaining strength every year. How does a generation gain traction in chaos?

Chaos is what we have now. We have corporations directing national policy. Our government is bogged down in its own bloated lies and bureaucracy. Our media has gone officially cuckoo and is one night of hookers and blow away from having a nervous breakdown on live television. People are expected to pay tens of thousands of dollars for a piece of paper that says they're qualified to know about a topic, but then cannot get a job to pay off the loans they took out to buy the piece of paper in the first place. Fifteen years ago when I went to the grocery store, I could get a cart pretty full for $100. These days, $100 barely buys the absolute basic necessities. We are living in madness.

So, there you have it. For a few moments while scrolling the internet, according to a few fringe studies and papers, I was labeled a Millennial and wholly resisted the idea. I'm sorry, guys. I feel badly for you, really I do. I even took this super official test to see how "Millennial" I am. I only scored 40/100, but I feel that's a good enough score to sympathize with your plight. I wish I could tell you everything will be okay, but with the way this election is shaping up and the mood of things right now, all I can say with certainty is that things are going to get rockier before they get better. If they ever do. I've been waiting fifteen years so far; no luck yet.

Gen X will try to help. We got hoodwinked by history, you see. We were raised to believe (rightly so!) that hard work and education would be surefire tickets to success; we got the rug yanked out from under us and have been slow to respond. We've been keeping our nose to the grindstone, so to speak, because we didn't really know what else to do. Were told for so long to just hang on and things would get better. Does that sound familiar, Millennials? We have made a career of just holding on while nothing has gotten better. Holding on is not progress and we know this, but we're too far in now.

Millennials will shoulder the brunt of it. Again, I'm sorry. I know the Millennial generation has been labeled as lazy and self-absorbed. And there are some that decidedly are. But that is true of Gen X, Baby Boomers, and probably every generation since the beginning of time. I think it's just that everything is much more visible in today's world, so perhaps those individuals are more obvious. I count many of my friends in the Millennial generation, and they are just as hardworking, selfless, and intelligent as anyone else. Which is to say, Millennials are a normal generation like any other, but still young and learning, with an obviously tough road ahead.

While reading on this subject I found that Gen X is also sometimes referred to as the "Echo Boomers." We were raised by Baby Boomers with Boomer values, but we are also the first of the "Digital Natives." We have a foot in both worlds, uniquely positioned to see both sides of a coin that has flipped with frightening speed. (Please realize that both generations are right about some things, and both are wrong about some things, yes? It is hard to be old in a new world, just as it is hard to be new in a world that insists on clinging to the old. Try to have patience with each other.)

Millennials have it within to be "The Next Greatest Generation." Things are coming that make the scifi worlds I grew up reading about seem like sad, caricatured ghosts. Correcting social wrongs, fixing democracy, making lasting changes that will benefit the future, those are fights for the young. I can tell you with certainty as I approach 40, the fire in my belly still burns, but not nearly as hot as it once did. I am world-worn now. Tattered around the edges by adulthood and the realities of bills, and work, and raising kids. Even so, I am glad to be Gen X. I don't think I could live my twenties over again, knowing how hard it is, and how much harder it would be now in 2016. I am hopeful that we are beginning to see the stirrings of real change, but we need the loudest voices to be those of the young. Now is your time, Millennials. We want to help, but you have the youth and vigor to lead the charge. Go out there and roar. No one calls the roaring lion "lazy."