As I’m writing in my journal, it’s late night in a sunless July. I’m returning to my hotel room in Udine, somewhere in Italy that does as well look like a continuation of the Austrian landscape. It’s about three in the morning. And this marks the first wedding that sends me home almost sober and in tears. I didn’t know how it would feel if, in my late 20s, I suddenly realized how lonely I feel around my friends. Friends who have become part of my identity. Not my entire identity, even, but a fragment of it. One I have outgrown as well (apparently). Some of those friendships were so dear to me, and they too have apparently run their course. And that painful fact came visiting me tonight, and I don’t know what to do with it, so I just write. And the more I try to describe it, the more vague it becomes, the meaning of what I’m feeling and experiencing now. It has been a long day of couples taking pictures with every cute decoration of the venue, and me pretending it’s going to get better, it will be fun.
“How’s your love life, Sammy?” I was asked a couple of times today.
“I’m currently dating myself,” they heard back.
I don’t feel lonely because I wanted to show up here with a lover or because I want to be in a relationship. No, not at all. I feel alone around the people I’ve surrounded myself with, and I reckon I might be an otrovert, or maybe I am just maudlin. :0