Sometimes I wish that people would do away with smiles, laughter, and feelings of ease to just confront the empty hole we're all filled up with. It makes me furious when people, including myself, use friends as distractions. And I hate to admit it to myself, but people who laugh at everything and everyone annoy me more than anyone else. Humoring someone because you're intimidated strikes me as a fallacy and a weakness. True friendships are those built on a foundation of two people's distinct individuality and sense of self, two concepts which I can't fathom existing outside of a self-centered or lonely sense of yourself.

Some branches of existentialist philosophy argue that loneliness is the heart of the human condition. Essentially, we are born alone, travel through life as individuals, and die alone, and facing this loneliness while learning to cope and thrive in spite of it is the testament of our species. The older I get (or maybe the more cynical I become; perhaps the two are linked) the more this strikes me as true.

Surrounding ourselves with friends and acquaintances is our way of putting off the darkness and, while important and worthy, it hits me more and more as trivial and worthless, as I spend more and more time every day contemplating my own sense of feeling alone in a crowd, sick of my vulnerability, while criticizing my futile attempts to reach out and connect with anyone and everyone.