Growing up means watching your social life melt like butter on hot pavement. Friends scatter into the ether of timetables and obligations. You try to pin down a conversation, like catching confetti in a windstorm. University teaches you plenty, mostly about impermanence, one moment you’re pals in class, the next you’re ghosts haunting the same hallway without eye contact. Isn’t that strange? Humans are built for connection, and yet we excel at quiet exits.
Clubs and pubs used to promise adventure. Now they’re dice rolls in a dimly lit room. Sometimes you meet someone worth remembering. Sometimes it’s just sticky floors and regret. Dating apps, oddly enough, gave me more hope, maybe because everyone on them was trying, really trying, to reach out across the void. I developed a lot of significant relationships coming out of them.
How do you all deal with boredom? Video games don't really appeal to me anymore, another symptom of becoming an adult, I suppose. I’ve flung myself into hobbies like a doomed astronaut grasping at stars. Reading, gym, guitar, wildlife conservation. Noble things. Good things. And yet, the black dog of depression strolls through my garden sometimes, sniffs at the marigolds, and lies down in the sun. I keep going anyway.
What took me by surprise was learning that reading turned out to be easy again. All it took was liking the book. Turns out your brain isn’t broken when you are passionate about something.