This is the first morning I’ve been alone since June. It’s not a temporary alone-ness, it’s a permanent one – one that will only be disturbed if I make an effort to leave my apartment and seek out the company of others.

Don’t make the mistake to think this is unwelcome. After VP, I was drained. I wanted to sit and stare at the walls and process, but with someone else living with me, there were no such moments available. I had to go to a coffee shop and be alone around others, which is not the same.

When you live with someone else, there’s a constant expectation of their presence. I’ve written about this before, in that even when they’re not there, they exist in a part of your mind that tells you, “You may be alone now, but you’ll never be fully alone. They’ll be back. Don’t even think about relaxing fully.”

I like being alone. Despite my sociability, I get drained. I’ve got it in me to do marathons of conversation (for days, even), but if I don’t get an equal amount of time to myself, I fade. I’ve been fading for a while. Even having someone else in the room with me, I used to use the presence of an other as an excuse to not write.

Now I have my apartment back. And I’m alone. Truly and fully alone. I can sit and cry, or listen to music I want to listen to, or cook things with onions in them, or I can put on a Disney movie and vacuum the carpet. I can even leave the TV OFF ALL DAY. And I can write.

There was a summer in college when all of my roommates had vacated and I had the entire place to myself. I was working as a bike messenger and I was miserable, hungry and tired all the time from the classes I was taking, the tutoring I was doing and the unpaid lab work. I couldn’t enjoy it. I would spread a sleeping bag out on the floor in the living room and eat my plain pasta when I got home at night while reading my Organic Chemistry textbook before I passed out so I could be out on the streets again at the ass crack of dawn for deliveries.

Now I have a job I enjoy, enough money to buy food I actually like to eat, I get enough sleep at night, and the things I’ve been working hard to make happen are actually starting to happen (provided I keep up the hard work, of course).

Getting older is fucking rad.

There are going to be good days and bad days in the coming weeks, I know, but on this perfect and peaceful morning, I can’t complain.

And though I don’t feel like it, I’m not going to be using the pity party I’ve been indulging the past few days to keep me from getting some words down today.

If you have no excuses, go make some art today. If you have lots of excuses, do it anyway. You’ll thank yourself later.