Once upon a time I was a sad unhappy antisocial engineering student. I was so unhappy with my life that I started drawing and imagining a life where I had lots of friends and a love interest, etc. And I got kinda lost in that fantasy until a real person took interest in me.

I started studying Biology and decided I wouldn't waste my twenties as I did my teenage years. As a teen I used to think I was so above drinking and parties and being social, and I ended up just missing a lot of experiences and alone.

I made friends, or rather they pushed and pushed until I let them in, they forced me to open up to others, though never completely, and made me want to better myself. I never really became social or upbeat/optimistic, but I got better, went partying, dating, meeting people. It didn't always go well, and those experiences kinda made me somewhat bitter, but I always learned something about life or myself.

I've experienced love in a very intense way, mostly in one-sided situations, and I've learned that real love makes you let go and truly appreciate other people's happiness, even if it's not with you. Even then, my eternal enemy is still loneliness.
I learned friends are as important as romantic partners, but I've spent so much time without romance that the lack of romantic love has eroded my capacity to truly appreciate the rest of my life. And it has started to become really depressing.
I'm not the kind of person who thinks having a boyfriend is a necessity, that I'm not whole. I am whole, and I'm very happy with who I am, there are a lot of things to fix and I know i can fix them. But spending most of my 20s without a partner and mostly without suitors has left me feeling uneasy about my appearance and my personality. I believe in myself and I like myself, but when other people don't take interest for so long you start to doubt what you feel.

Lately this has been affecting the way I feel about life in general, as I said before I'm not really an optimist person, but as a biologist I know life is awesome and amazing, and I'm starting to feel like it really isn't worth it to make an effort to stand out.
I recently graduated, so I'm technically unemployed. I live in El Salvador, which is a small and backwards country. I got the best education I could get here, so it's not saying much.
My dream is to go to grad school, have a Masters and a PhD, dedicate my life to the study of ants, because I find them fascinating. But I have no idea how to do that. I had people who work as researchers tell me I just have to write an email to a professor in the states and then magically I'll be over there working as a TA living happily ever after.
So I look online for labs in my area of interest, find a couple, see what their research is, get very overwhelmed at the complexity of the stuff they do, open up my email and stare at the blank thing for an hour before closing it. I'm too scared to write anything because I don't know what to say, or ask, and I don't want to blow my chance...

I've spent months on that and I'm starting to feel useless, like I've been planning on this for years and when the time comes I don't have the balls to actually do it. I've never had that much will power but come on, this is important...
And when I have this piled up on top of my other emotional stuff, then things get chaotic in my head... I get very sad, my friends don't notice because they're too busy with their stuff and that's ok, it's not their job, and I don't want to cause conflict or be needy or whatever.

I wish I had someone who knew what steps I have to take to do what I want to do, and not just say stuff casually like it's the normal, obvious way to go. I'm not american, my country is notorious for practically invading the states with illegal immigrants, I have no money, I have no idea what papers I'd have to magically create even if a professor said yes to the question I don't know how to ask.

Or instead of that, I'd want someone to just hug me ]: and not in the chat hugs kinda way.. but a real hug... It seems like too much to ask for in this age.

Most of all I wish I had something relevant to do with my life other than sitting on my butt all day, and being yelled at for being a lazy bum with no future.

That's why I haven't drawn anything, too depressed, and I'm kind of embarrassed to not have anything to show so I stopped opening up this page all together. I also want to comment on everything I fave and I just haven't been up for it :(

But I'll try to get better and be better, I realized I just have to remember who I am, what I've achieved, and that no one else did it but me. I can do the things i want, it'll be hard but it can be done, and well if ants are to be taken as examples: there is more than one way to achieve something.

If anyone read all that, thank you and I'm sorry. I just really needed to write it all up, I'm tired of dropping it on friends, and I wanted to take it off my mind. It really helped :)

tl;dr: I'm sad and lonely but hopefully I'll get better.