Walking back home is always something to look forward to at the end of my pathetic workload of class Mondays and Wednesdays. I usually walk pretty briskly, head low, hurrying to my dilapidated apartment thats just about as empty as my mind is during these little walks. Every once in a while I space out, but its usually to think about what I'll make for dinner or whatever homework that was assigned to me. Even then when I have a commission or some other odd thing to work on that also happens to cleverly put off all the legal bull I really need to start filling out- there's still a sense of fruitlessness involved in my day to day. I don't consider myself a writer by any means, but walking home when the snow is white or that ashen grey color that matches the sky sure as hell is fodder for a story. And the story doesn't have to be all that well written, but just some things I want to say to an audience. On the rare occasion that I do exhaust my extensive list of whats for dinner and what I'll do to occupy my existence that evening, I think about where I am in the world. This is a genre that is commonplace amongst young adults like myself, so I sure as hell aint no special case in whatever you're meandering through right now. Thing is, its always the same theme that pretty much consumes me almost to the point of extreme melancholy - without producing art in any sense of form, I am just a body that serves no other purpose.

To wax a little, friends are few and far between. I can go on and on about that cliche of how I'm a lone wolf with no friends or any sort of solace in my lucrative art freelance businesses is a distraction from my genius, but god damn its a sorry existence indeed.

As a kid I read stories of the shy hero with a circle of friends that supported them, or stories of a loner that redeemed themselves worthy of companionship, or a trio that takes down some evil force with the power of friendship and the like. I grew up thinking that maybe, one day, some day, I'd have that. I thought I did for a while, but that turned out to be a farce. I turned to the swamp waters of the internet and found friends then. Still, for some reason, it wasn't enough. I spent a long time thinking about what I wanted. I spent hours and hours to the point of near obsession why having people online say hi to me wasn't enough. I thought I came through a breakthrough when I wanted physical touch accompanied with comanderie, but after an almost mocking sexual assault I stopped completely in the trail of equating physical interaction with friendship. After then, I withdrew within myself and treated people coming and going as ethereal, as one day I'd transcend the stupid need for companionship. I lied to myself for a miserable amount of months following that 'resolution'.

It wasn't until I met a tall gawky writer boy that I fell in love with that I figured out what I wanted. What I wanted was found in an old white house that looked haphazardly stuck together with ambitions of youth in the weird overgrown bodies of adulthood. It was found on a creaky floorboard, nestled on a mattress on the floor, with hot bodies around me and smoke permeating the air. Laughter, slurred stories, smiling faces and the completely calm atmosphere of mañana consumed me one night in the desert house. This is what I wanted. A circle of friends. The same faces, day in and day out, relaxing in an environment built just for them, existing as a unit. After two weeks of nights like that I sought to grow up from that image, despite my naiveté to the idea of what exactly growing up meant.

I then discovered that now, in a steel jungle 1600 miles away from the homey familiarity of the desert, being a 'grown up' is unbearably, absolutely, and consistently lonely. Growing up holds no time to just hang out and shoot the shit. Growing up doesn't allow for a fun night on the town with a tenner in your back pocket and a half a tank of gas. Growing up doesn't allow for drunkenly consoling a friend over a summer love she once had. Growing up doesn't allow for crying into a drink while at the same time thanking the person giving it to me. Growing up doesn't allow for lazy Sunday Mornings with the fingertips of a lover trailing down your back, last night's party haze still in his eyes. Growing up is routine, and caution, and planning. I had to swallow the idea that growing up was a fruitless gesture of fulfilling a pattern that our parents parents set up for kids like me.

The problem of Growing up can, however, be eased into with friends. A circle of friends, where everyone either together or one on one still coexisted as a unit. 19 years later, I still haven't found it and I'm starting to feel a hurt deep in my soul, found in my gut whenever I read, see, or hear the mention of best friends or a unit I so desperately want at this point. To the point where tears prickle in my throat and face, I want that sort of sense of family, of belonging. I want to find in friends that I couldn't find even in my own family. I want to be a part of something, of a happy something, where everyone is excited to see me at the table or the spot under the shady trees in summer. I want to be able to call anyone at any times of night to hear the voice of someone who comforts me, who I can see the next day. I want to provide the same thing for these groups of people.

Instead, I have friends haphazardly all over the place with their own lives and their own ambitions, some so far removed from me that talking to them each time is just a quick up to speed chat of whats going on in each others lives. Is this what its going to be like for the rest of my life? Today, my love for my best friend and lover consumes me, but alas he is still a man with his own friends and life. We do not complete each other, nor do we want to be completed by the other. We have different needs and I guess mine is still found at the bottom of pungent burning nature's cure or in the hands of a tangy drink that reddens my cheeks, surrounded by happy like-minded faces. The only times I feel truly, honestly, content with myself is only during those times. Where we gather to alter together, to laugh together, to wheeze and cry and bellow and move as a cohesive unit.

Until then, I pump out art that reflects the things I crave into the cavernous, almost lonely maw of the internet and find a purpose in that. And those unfortunate times whenever I'm not drawing, sleeping, or eating, I'm contemplating how exhaustively lonely my day to day life is. Humans seldom ever come up with anything good in times of solitude…

… like one of the walks I just had, coming home from school in an empty apartment.