Gray Ashes

I'm just incredibly lonely, bouncing back and forth between wild abandon and instant depression, attempting to bridge the gap in a relatively meaningless existence. I light the world on fire and watch it burn, settling into gray ashes, the remnants of ink and paper that once meant something. 

I feel the same way, like I meant something once, like I held value long ago. Now, I feel my meaning deeper, as if in a symbolic way, just as gray ashes on the concrete hold a greater metaphor for existence than a blueprint of plans for perfecting the world around me. 

That's all I used to be, is a pitiful excuse for a sheltered teenager, completely unaware of the privilege and opportunity I'd been born into, stuck with the belief that my life was far worse than that of others, simply because it's unusual or strange. I'd been stranded into the idea that I could tell no one, say nothing, speak not a word, and the exclusivity dramatized the experiences, emphasizing them out of proportion in my mind. 

Yet now, I have begun to speak it to the world around me, watching it land. I have encountered friends with genuine hardships and watched them learn to live in a world devoid of opportunities. I have seen a singular text be enough to keep a person alive, seen a popsicle bring more happiness than any other object here on Earth could have. 

And yet still I am lonely, separated as I am from the people around me. I've built up these characters, these voices in my head to play with me and talk with me, but only now that I have truly loved humanity do I realize how shallow the voices of my imaginary friends have been. I've cast out the rest of the world, inviting everyone to be my friend but only trusting myself with one, maybe two or three people. 

Yet everyone I know is busy, or far too overwhelmed to deal with my first-world problems, though of course they'll never tell me that. 

But I'm sick and tired of plastering on my eccedentesiasm! I just want to laugh with someone who understands me, someone who has the same sense of humor, someone just as clingy as I, someone who wants to spend every waking minute with someone just because they love them, and for no other real or genuine reason. 

Nothing reminds me of the importance of true friends until they aren't there anymore. Nothing clarifies to me my lack of true friends like when I don't notice when they're gone. 

So yes, now I'm just banging my head on desks, trying to make it one more, two more, three more days, holding out and bottling up all these inexpressible feelings I miss out in the missing of companionship. 

It's odd. I never realize how reliant I am on friendships until I am devoid of them, and then I'll do anything to get them back. 

But missing one person reminds me of how much I miss everyone, and then I just spiral into a half-hearted scrolling through my phone, laughing at every picture, crying over every video and playing them again and again and again and again and again and--

I'm just so tired of the status quo, wanting to fast forward time but unable to make it even two minutes without checking my phone to see if anyone has sent me a message... still no one. I'm caught up. Completely caught up on every email, every text, every messaging app and have been for weeks. 

I am unused to loneliness, and I handle it poorly.