I've always thought there's something not quite right within me. Or maybe not wrong, exactly; just out of place. I can function in most rooms. I can talk the language, nod at the right times, laugh where I’m supposed to. But I carry this thing inside me, this quiet, unsorted yearning that doesn’t quite know where to sit.
When I was younger, I thought I wanted to be an artist. It sounded noble. Romantic, even. I imagined myself painting in a sunlit studio, shirts with paint stains, books everywhere, the occasional cigarette, the occasional melancholy. It’s a nice picture. People like that picture. But what they don’t tell you is how lonely art is. And not the beautiful, tragic kind of loneliness either, just the regular kind. The sort where you spend a whole day making something and at the end of it, no one’s asking for it. No one’s waiting. It doesn’t matter if you finish it or throw it into a drawer and forget about it.
