Nothing looks the same anymore. My old couch lent a certain charm to my apartment, the dark cabernet red blending together the old carpet and the strong contrasts between my black TV table and my white walls, but it wasn’t large enough to stretch out on and my back was paying the price. I can’t sleep so sometimes I get up to watch Netflix late at night, my legs hanging over one end with my neck craned up against the other with a pillow stuffed between me and endless chiropractic bills. This year isn’t turning out how I planned it. I turned 23 and returned to university under the misguided conceit of obtaining some sort of meaning to my life that I felt I’d lost somewhere along the way. I already have enough student loan debt to sink a med student for years so what’s a few more thousand dollars? Writing for a living really means trying to find a job that pays more than minimum wage just so you don’t end up on the streets but I can’t even manage to do that. I don’t find jobs. I get lucky, or not. Maybe I’ll convince someone to pay me for thinking with my fingers attached to a keyboard someday. I don’t even write that much, really I spend most of my time miserable at home alone, on my tiny half-couch that I don’t fit on.

University isn’t what I expected, but I don’t know what I thought it would be. I went to college after high school for one semester, the worst semester of my life, up until now. There were good times but they consisted of watching movies in my room instead of sleeping, staying up late, obsessed with discovering a new world of possibilities in film and music and literature. I failed half my classes because I was sick. The others I passed because I couldn’t bear to fail. I don’t even know if it was a mistake anymore, really, I don’t remember it. I wish I could say it’s because I was high all the time, but in truth, I was just a bored kid who didn’t understand that life would pass me by if I didn’t do something about it. Life is still passing me by. I’m still staying up late but a lot of the magic is gone.

I’ve done things though. I moved two provinces away and didn’t see my family for eight months. That’s a long time when you’re 22, I think. I don’t have anyone to tell me how comparative that is. I studied film, I made friends, I made enemies. Then I ran out of money, or maybe I ran out of ideas, and moved back home. A year is only a long time if you’re busy, otherwise the days turn into nights, and the nights all come to a sad end of exhaustion and the feeling that you’re missing out on something. When you stay up all night you realize the world doesn’t stop and start with you. People wake up and begin their days, unaware that anything has changed, dreams or nightmares still lingering in their heads, now getting dressed for today, but you’ll be watching them with the awareness that time went on without waiting for them to catch up. Staying up all night has that effect on you. It also wrecks your entire system. I haven’t been able to stay awake for a whole day in a long time now, always falling asleep somewhere in the afternoon and not being able to get back up again for several hours, which costs me sleep time at night and the whole process repeats itself.

I thought I’d meet new people. That’s what they tell you, isn’t it? You’ll go to school and meet new people and have experiences and join organizations and try new things. I feel like I’ve been conned. I keep expecting to come home to find my apartment empty, or an eviction notice on my door, proof that the world played a trick on me, that I’m not cut out for this life, that now I have to get a normal job that I hate and work until I’m all alone and eventually am just another patient waiting to die on a hospital bed. Nobody will write about me, nobody will remember me, nobody will love me. Maybe I’m doing something wrong, maybe there’s something wrong with me. Maybe there’s nothing wrong with me, I’m just too insignificant for there to be any thing about me at all.

I don’t know how to talk to people socially. Professionally, I’m charming, witty, sly, easy-going. Personally I’m neurotic, insecure, and easily distracted. Nothing anybody says interests me more than the constant internal narrative of my life. It’s difficult to take an interest in what the other person has to say when everything outside your imagination is just so boring in comparison. On the other hand, it’s easy to be entertained without needing to do anything, although it can be dangerous to drive. Have I just not met the right people or am I antisocial? Everyone’s got their best friend except me. All of my friends live far and away and though in the age of the internet we keep in touch, I still dream about the last time I saw them and what I would say if I were to see them again. Then I wake up.

My new couch isn’t quite the right colour. It sticks out, contrasts, draws too much attention, but it’s large, and it’s soft, and it doesn’t hurt me to lie down on it. It isn’t actually new but it’s new to me. Used furniture tells a story, even if you don’t know what that story is. At least that’s what somebody once told me. I still don’t know if I believe them, but I do know I wouldn’t have bought myself a new couch. I spend too much money for someone who doesn’t make any. I spend too much money for someone who does. I should be more frugal, although I do save money every month, and I have savings. I’ve never been a large spender, just a steady spender. I have to keep myself entertained somehow. I should take a trip somewhere but then I’d have no savings left over for that inevitable moment when I get caught trying to con the world into thinking I can make my living as an artist. That’s not an unusual fear, right?

I wish I knew how to do things. I wish I was one of those people who didn’t have to give themselves a pep talk in order to enter a room and talk to a receptionist, or a salesperson, or the teacher. Funny how you trade skills sometimes. I used to be able to hold eye contact with anyone no matter how much superiority they had over me. Now I can negotiate a contract, but I can’t maintain eye contact with a baby. It’s supposed to get more difficult to learn new skills as you get older, but maybe you really just have a harder time finding something to barter with. Like being in prison, nobody wants to trade with you until they figure out your deal, except that in this case, the prison is life and the other inmates have already turned their backs.

Most of my writer friends say they write because they have to, as if they’ll go insane if they don’t write, or as if they have so many ideas inside them they can’t stop them from coming out. It feels like that from time to time but it’s mostly it’s more like wandering around in a desert trying to find water. You know you need it but it just isn’t there, and when you finally do find it you’re not even sure if it’s real, or if you can make it. People die of thirst just when they finally stumble upon water, unable to actually make the steps to take what is right in front of them. That’s how I’d describe it, if anyone were to ask, dying of thirst ten feet from water.

I honestly can’t decide anymore how much value I place on relationships. If I’m not happy where I am, I want the freedom to move somewhere else. If I feel attached to even one person, would that be enough to keep me here? Would I give up on my dreams, attributing them to feelings of restlessness due to excessive energy, just for the sake of somebody who may or may not turn out to be relatively significant to me? I often dream of buying a one-way ticket somewhere and not telling anyone until I come back for the holidays. If they didn’t like it, well, I’m only here for a couple nights. I don’t need to be able to live out of a suitcase, but I want to feel capable of doing so. My backpack feels lighter on my shoulders than my keys do in my pocket. Is this the curse of my generation, our inability to commit to anything, or is it our blessing, that we don’t need to define ourselves by things? Or is this just my way of trying to rationalize the feeling that I don’t belong anywhere, and I’m just talking about travelling because that’s what all my peers are supposedly doing, and I want to fit in with them by not fitting in with anything else? The real irony is that I don’t even know if I’m being sincere or not.

These feelings are real though, and I feel them right now, on my new couch. I don’t feel at home anywhere anymore. If that feeling is out there somewhere, I’m not sure if I want to find it, not yet. I want to be uncomfortable. I want to keep moving, swimming forward, struggling against something just so I can feel myself trying. I’ve grown up more than I wanted to but I still feel like a child. Peter Pan is now a man-child in today’s pop psychology world. What’s the opposite? How do you describe a kid in an adult’s body who wants to grow up to be younger? Time is still passing me by. Did life forget about me or did I forget about life? These are questions I have to ask myself because nobody else will ask them for me. They just mumble out the same derivative non-advice that you can read in any article online for free. I don’t really believe in advice anymore. I think its only real value is to consider alternative outcomes like expanded universe story lines; useful if you’re looking for a never-ending story, but ultimately disposable. Life lessons only come the hard way, any other way and they’re not really lessons at all.

If I had more friends, I’d be happy. If I got more exercise, I’d be happy. If I talked to strangers, if I worked more, if I played more, if I had more sex, more fun, more money, I’d be happy. I’m not unhappy, but I’m not happy either. I don’t think anymore that happiness exists on a scale from 1 to 10. Happiness isn’t something to be obtained or lost, and it isn’t a state of mind. I know what happiness isn’t, but I’m not sure I know what it is. I’m okay with that. My new couch has taught me that. Having room to stretch out sometimes makes up for something being the wrong colour. Sometimes I put on the right music or read the right book or watch the right movie and I just know what it is that I want but not where to get it. I need to get out of my apartment more often but I don’t know where to go. I can never seem to leave the city. I’m trapped in a Buñuel movie.

I don’t know where I’m going with this, I really don’t. Is this supposed to be an essay on something? I don’t know. I wish I could say I’m learning something at the end of all this. I’m learning not to let life pass me by, I’m learning that there’s still lots of life out there, that my potential has yet to be realized, that these are the best years of my life and I’m going to take advantage of them. None of these feel true. I guess we don’t so much move through time as time moves through us. This couch barely fit into my apartment. It took almost half an hour of adjusting and trying every different angle before it slipped through the doorway. That’s how I feel about life. I’m just trying to fit through the doorway while everybody else is waiting for me inside. My colours aren’t right and I’m a bit used and worn but at least I have room to stretch out. This is a terrible conclusion but I don’t have a better one. I’m doing the best I can.