Where to start? The first line. The first line. All of my professors used to bug me about the importance of the first line. It must be attention grabbing. It must be profound. It must be different from every other first line of any book ever written. It must be… the first line.

My mind is going a thousand miles a minute. (Which is a horribly unoriginal first line, but at this point it isn’t the first line anymore.) Maybe not that fast. Maybe just about 60 miles per hour, but still that’s faster than I can go without a car, so it’s pretty fast. I was sitting in my bed. I was sitting and doing nothing, and I was hating myself for doing nothing. It’s such a catch 22 you know, those days when you get a chance to sit around and stay in bed only to leave for food or to take a piss, and you hate yourself for it. Because you’re not experiencing life. You’re not learning new lessons, meeting new people, adding pictures of artistically placed flowers to your Instagram profile. You’re not doing anything.

You’re alone.

I like being alone sometimes. I like being alone when my mind allows it.

There are those days when being alone is a blessing. Your mind sits back in the hammock I know that it is hiding up there, and it takes a break and welcomes whatever Netflix binge you chose to watch and not really pay attention to or care about.

Then there’s today. The day when every stupid movie I choose to watch seems to somehow relate to my life and what I’m doing, or more what I’m not currently doing, and what I probably should be doing. Then all of these thoughts start piling in. All of these different profound things that I know I need to write down, but my mind is going 60 miles per hour and my hands are not and I can’t keep up, so I start writing about something completely different and I’m lost.

I’ve always wanted to do something. I’ve wanted to be something. To go somewhere. From the first doodles I ever doodled I asked, I begged, for freedom. But from what?! I grew up in a nice neighborhood. I was raised by nice parents. I had good friends and went to a good school and had a good life.

But nice and good are such shitty words.

I’m sitting here in my apartment that I don’t have enough money to pay for, and all I want is to experience something. Just typing that line makes my mind race with contradictions.

I want to feel my blood pump full of adrenaline.

But on the other side most things that cause that sensation are dangerous. Do we really want to put ourselves into danger? How about controlled danger?

Well control is no fun. Control is what we are fighting against.

But we don’t want to be hurt or get into trouble.

We want to live. I want to live, but I’m afraid of living.

I am living currently. I am breathing, and performing all of the other normal bodily functions. Yet I feel as if time is passing me by and I’m stagnant. I look out of the double doors that lead to the balcony of this perfectly mediocre apartment I’ve been living in for two years, and I stop breathing. I feel a tightness in my chest that I cannot release until I look away. Until my fingers start moving on the keys again and I feel the tightness loosen. I feel the want for something better give way to what is. My perfectly mediocre life.

A part of me knows that I can go out and do something. I can get all dressed up and do my hair and makeup and sit at a bar where some men will talk to me. But where does that take me? It could lead to meaningless sex with someone I don’t know, which will end with me feeling worse than I already do at this present moment. No, that will help nothing.

I can call friends, but that requires money. Doing anything other than leaving my apartment requires money. Even staying here is costing me. I have the lights on. Up and up the electric bill goes. I am trying to save the money. I’m not very good at saving it though, but I try.

I could ask a friend to come over. I could ask a friend to join me in my apartment and we can sit and drink and maybe even smoke and then they will leave and I will be left alone yet again wondering the exact same things that I was before I asked them to come over in the first place.

If I go out I will feel worse, because I will see the other people. I will see them with their friends or significant others and they will look happy. Not all of them, but some. I will be jealous of them. I will come back to my apartment and feel worse or possibly the same.

I looked out the balcony door again … I keep doing that.

I want to make coffee, but I don’t want to stop writing. I want to do many things, but I don’t want to stop writing. I’ve wanted to write for weeks, but couldn’t think of anything worth sitting here in this uncomfortable chair in solitude to write about. Now I’ve found inspiration inside of my own mind. The emptiness inside of my mind has become the words on the page. My only goal in this endeavor is to rid myself of the emptiness. To rid myself of the longing for life, while I am already fully living, at least physically speaking.