ADULT

About a year and a half ago two very distinct things happened to me. The first, I graduated from a Masters program at University, and the second, my long term relationship of the past four years ended dramatically. I found myself floating in an unemployable void, not really knowing what my next move was, or should be, and to make things worse, I was thrust into a world that I didn’t understand or know how to function within. I was single, unemployable, drunk all the time and extremely lonely. I started doing the whole dating thing again and met some cool people along the way but for the most part nothing stuck, and my mental state seemed to be getting worse. I started looking for a connection in places and people that weren't right for me, and vice versa. The want for intimacy can be a selfish motivation, and I've had my fair share of both hurting and being hurt in the process. I realised after a while that I didn’t know how to be by myself, and that I didn't know who I was individually, outside of a relationship. I didn’t have the capability to function properly as a red eyed twenty four year old; as an adult.
Frustrated and lonely, I started to think about how weird trying to navigate this world was becoming, and how bizarre the modern notion of dating and meeting people really is. I didn't really know how to deal with these thoughts, and how to process them, so I started putting them down on paper. I took my own personal experiences, and that of good friends, and started to try and write something that felt genuine to all of our collective experiences, something that felt relatable, or at least something that I hoped would be relatable. The aim was to write something that helped me make sense of how I was feeling about connectedness versus loneliness, and where these two concepts work against each other.
‘Adult’ is a short narrative drama about navigating these types of intimate relationships, and what happens when the boundaries between close friends become blurred in a drunken haze. It is centred around two friends, Nick and Emma, who decide to hang out in a hotel room and when they switch on the television porn is playing. This leads them to begin experimenting with what is on the screen after a discussion about fake intimacy. It's a female led story where decisions led by loneliness and the seeking of connection can lead to an uncomfortable situation.
This project is a very personal one to me, and something that I hope resonates with people who have experienced or gone through similar feelings about loneliness, and the pressure we put on ourselves to find a connection, and the fault in doing so when incapable of acting as an ‘adult.’