Dear Internet Void,

How are you? I am doing well. I'm hoping you can answer a question for me: What is the "Real World" like? I've heard about it my entire life, but have yet to really understand where to find it. For example, when something disappointing happens, people will dryly say, "Welcome to the Real World." Or when people talk about graduating college, they talk about when they are "out in the Real World." Yet, despite an apparent assumption that there is an underlining universal understanding of the Real World, I have yet to encounter a satisfying description of it.

Most explanations of the Real World come from my extensive viewings of films, but I'm not sure if that is an accurate source for discovering the Real World. It is much more difficult to trust other people than what is often suggested on screen. I cannot identify with the Wealthy Successful Protagonist Who Is Handsome. Film cannot capture the depths of loneliness.

What I experience of life is so different from film and books, but what I know of life does not match this mythical idea of Real World. I often wonder why we make the decisions we do, especially when Time is fleeting, yet we spend most of our lives complaining about being either too busy or too bored.

If the Real World is mythical, and I have a certain view of the world, but ultimately I wish for the Real World to be like something else in order to exist in that kind of Real World, then where have I gotten myself to? Another illusion of reality?

With a year of graduate school come and gone, I wonder what life I hold in my hands? I was not the person I wanted to be. These walls around my heart kept me from reaching for the new, rather, I longed for the old things that are no longer mine.

I wish that the Real World could look a little bit more like Love.