It’s not that I don’t have friends. But lately, whether by choice or circumstance, I feel alone.
I have ten or fifteen people I consider close friends. Maybe they’re just more capable than I am: they got through university without much trouble and, despite the usual anguish of job hunting, found good jobs before they even graduated. Some went abroad to study and are now teaching. More than eighty percent married in their twenties and have families of their own; some already have babies.
Somehow, we’ve drifted apart. For years now, we’ve only managed to meet when our schedules happen to align. I’ve gradually retreated into a world of my own. I have far too much time on my hands, so I spend my days talking away in our group chat, telling them I can always work around their schedules. We met just twice last year. This year, we even skipped our New Year’s gathering.
I know, rationally, that I have to accept this reality. Still, I keep feeling lonely and left out. Whenever we do meet, I’m the one making all the fuss—singing, digging up old memories and photographs. I feel as though I have to do something, anything, to make the occasion count. I want to show them that I’m getting on just fine too, but this is how things really are. I know everyone has their difficulties and only posts the good parts on social media. Still, as the saying goes, we believe what we see. Everyone looks happy, while I seem to do nothing but fill my stomach, drift from café to café and spend my evenings getting pleasantly drunk. It’s a feeling that returns every night, and it’s hard to bear.
Ninety percent of my life these days seems to be spent on thoughts like these—so what can I say? They’re not thoughts I want to have. Of course this life eats away at my sense of self, and with my mind in such an unhealthy state, it’s hardly surprising that my work and studies aren’t going well. All the talk of art and photography around me simply goes in one ear and out the other.
After two or three years of this, I’ve come to feel like nothing more than a shell: the outside still intact, the inside empty. I’m ashamed. I have little to show for myself, yet my pride is absurdly large. Somehow, that is how I’m getting through the summer of 2017.
Even now, as I write this, I desperately want a beer. I’m on a diet, though, so I’ve spent thirty minutes debating whether to go to the convenience store and buy one. Then I catch sight of myself in the mirror, and I can’t stand what I see.
