Tonight, I feel lonely.

I’ll sit with that sentiment and let it simmer.

I’m sitting on the couch my parents gave me, a comfortable brown leather couch my dad bought back in 1980, and I’m twirling my long, black hair around my fingers in my one bedroom apartment. My Christmas lights brighten up the corner of my living room.

My puppy, Luna, (who acts like a cat) vanishes into the other room. On my kitchen table a green highlighter is stuck between a 1173 page GMAT book that I’ve been living in, studying for this exam, trying to get into graduate school. I cannot wait to take the exam, as it’s left me feeling disconnected from my friends.

But there are personal and professional goals one must attain. It won’t be long, I remind myself.

Adulthood is strange. Sometimes it’s fun and games, late nights out with friends, beer gardens with fancy string lights, and international food. !Food trucks! Avocados! Sometimes it’s the $7.99 Barefoot Moscato from Food Lion.

Other nights it’s you dodging questions about retirement savings in a pair of an old boyfriend’s (who was nice to you) sweatpants on a weekday, trying to figure out if you can afford to buy the organic, GMO free boneless chicken or just eat from the 5 pound bag of rice in your pantry for the week.

It’s 12:39AM here in Durham, North Carolina. My entire building is silent. The guitar and piano melodies of Aguas De Marco by Elis Regina and Antonio Carlos Jobim bounce off of the walls in my apartment. They speak of the beauty of life, stages of transitions, and living in the moment.

This is what I am trying to do.

Sometimes I feel my adulthood is even stranger. Some of my dearest friends live in other countries. Two of my girl friends are in the Dominican Republic, another is in Thailand, and my closest guy friend is in Spain. Long distance relationships are difficult but possible. Pretty soon you know how to maneuver time zones, how to distinguish a Whatsapp call from a regular phone call. Write in Skype dates in pen in your calendar and highlight it in yellow. Draw a heart, if you will.

I use my middle and ring finger to vertically scroll through my Twitter feed. When you’re not doing anything, it always appears that people are truly having more fun in their lives than you are.

I see a tweet on my Twitter timeline; apparently this is a moment in my life where the universe is trying to connect with me,  21^st century style.

My eyes scan the tweet by @valeriehalla posted on June 16, 2017.

“It’s easy to get sad about your long distance friends. But did u know… every time u both go outside, you’re technically in the same room.”

So I went outside.