by David Uptin
I was sitting at a highway rest stop near Tweed Heads on New Year’s Day. My parents and I were eating pre-made bread rolls (they rarely eat out, and I’m just now beginning to understand why) when I told them,
“I have a feeling this year will be very significant for me.”
They nodded politely, said they were curious to see what the coming year would bring, and prayed about it. I don’t know if they’ve paid it much mind since then; I haven’t asked.
I’d felt such things within me, at the core of my being, for the entire preceding Christmas week, and had only just verbalised it. Call it a gut instinct, call it (as I did) a sign from God, I was susceptible to its vague yet tantalising power, willing to believe any hopeful thing it told me. This was when I’d first made the decision, after graduating with a BFA in Creative Writing at the end of 2024, to pursue neither full-time work nor further study in 2025. I was excited for this year; I’d set myself tasks, to finish an entire manuscript by September, to have saved a decent sum of money, to generally enjoy a kind of freedom I’d not yet known.
I’ve come to know, of course, that freedom is a weapon barbed on both sides. The Bukowski quote haunts me to this moment:
“…and when nobody wakes you up in the morning, and when nobody waits for you at night, and when you can do whatever you want. What do you call it, freedom or loneliness?”
I had my reasons for taking a gap year (of sorts) in 2025. My Writing degree had flown past with a velocity and a force I’d never expected from it, and I knew if I wanted to have any sort of actual writing career, I needed to get serious about my manuscripts in a way I hadn’t been throughout uni. I’d always blamed my lack of manuscript work during uni on the demands of the course; any other answer seemed more morbid, more suggestive of a darkness inside me.
As for the manuscript, that great Australian novel by the person whom classmates and tutors alike said had so, so much potential? Why, I have two chapters, of course, which I keep obsessively editing while spiralling into self-hatred about why I haven’t written more.The most maddening thing is that I haven’t always been like this. I’ve had times in my life when words have appeared to write themselves on my page. When I push myself, they still do. I can write a thousand words in an hour or less, and after doing so find myself more fulfilled than ever yet more numb than ever, a contradictory cocktail. Of course, I inevitably look back at words I wrote two years ago, hate them, and with ice and judgement in my veins force a full rewrite; maybe this self-flagellation is part of why I’m getting nowhere.
In the early months of this year, I told myself I was burnt out, that my final semester at uni had taken more of a mental toll on me than I’d realised. I took on a lot of responsibility during that semester, managed and mediated intense interpersonal conflicts, but if I’m honest with myself, the breakdown was brewing long before that.I don’t know if I can really blame anyone but myself for this.
What I longed for from this year, all those weeks ago as I returned after Christmas, was a butterfly moment, some grand transfiguration on which I could look back and be ever grateful. If anything, the opposite has occurred, watching myself shrink back into the cocoon. I feel less and less motivated to leave the house, less and less motivated to stay home, to even stay awake. I look back from twenty-one to even eighteen and wonder where that zest, that passion went, why my eighteen-year-old self was so excited to do all these things that would petrify his future form.
I’ve essentially had to confront the fact that I don’t know how to make friends. And without uni, I don’t even know where to find them.
Being an only child taught me from day zero that if I couldn’t entertain myself, if I couldn’t be happy on my own, I was done for. I’ve always been a lone wolf, but as I aged into high school this fact entered an unfortunate marriage with severe social insecurity. I felt acutely, in high school, that I was inferior and annoying, and that it was pointless to even ask anyone to talk to me because they’d just reject me. I had no date to my high school formal for this reason: I was too scared to ask anyone.
I’ve always been alone, but this is the first year I have felt truly lonely. Just two years ago, living in the same neighbourhood and participating in almost the same circles, I would never have predicted this to be an issue: I had so many friends, didn’t I? I had my accommodation social circle, my uni circle, my church circle. So many people, it almost became exhausting!
Yet when those fall away, as they did this year for various reasons, and I’m left to count the people I actually feel I can talk to on a regular basis, I can’t even lift all my fingers.
I sit in my apartment, dreading any texts or phone calls, yet also obsessively wanting them, grasping any distraction from my own failure.
I sit in my apartment, counting down till nine o’clock. Because going to bed before nine o’clock would mean I’m depressed, and I’m obviously, surely not, right?
I wish I could offer some hopeful resolution to this piece, truly. As a writer, I always try to put a hopeful spin on even the darkest story.
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David Upton is an emerging writer of queer and contemporary Australian fiction, currently based in Magandjin/Brisbane. He has completed a BFA in Creative Writing from QUT, where he worked in editorial roles at ScratchThat Magazine and the QUT Literary Salon. He has also volunteered at both the Brisbane and Sydney Writer’s Festivals. David loves writing and reading introspective, personal fiction, dealing with characters similar enough to himself that he can learn something, yet different enough to himself that their excavation is not too painful. When not writing or reading, David can be found walking, listening to music, or generally trying to distract himself from the sinking feeling that writing and reading are his whole personality which creating this bio never helps.
This piece was submitted by David for Glass: The Annual Edition.
