A few weeks after my 16th birthday, I made a new friend at my new school, Steve. Within months we’d become best friends and basically inseparable. Just platonic friends but we did everything together, went to music festivals, had our first foreign holiday together, took drugs together, shared our favourite books, had discussions long into the night, shared our secrets and problems that we’d never tell anyone else. Went through all kinds of difficulties and hardships and loss side by side. He was my best friend for nearly a decade, and at age 25 we finally lost touch. He moved to another city and my health took a turn for the worse. One day it was just the last time we saw each other and now it’s been 17 years.
Those 17 years haven’t been good for me, with my worsening health, having to give up work and socialising, and just losing all hope of ever having anything worthwhile. But I often thought of Steve and everything we’d shared.
Today i was googling people I’d known and I found a social media page for Steve. He’s now married with two kids. It seems crazy to me that this whole time I’ve been sitting here rotting alone he’s been living his best life. He and his wife and kids all look so happy in their pictures. All the photos are of them happily goofing around together with all their friends and family, going on holidays and living life. And I am happy for him, he was always a great friend and decent person who deserves to be happy but it just highlighted to me how empty and pointless my life is. 17 years have passed and what has changed for me? Just everything getting worse.
It’s also crazy to me that after such a long and close friendship i didn’t even know he was married, much less being invited to the wedding. So strange how you can be such close friends with someone for so long and not even be at their wedding. I was not well enough to go anyway but the not even being invited does hurt.
I don’t really know what I hope to achieve with this rant other than I have literally no-one else to talk to, and it’s hard and embarrassing living such a pathetic life when everyone I’ve ever known turned out to be “normal” while I’m now a weird loner shut in who can’t even eat without begging for handouts, who never goes anywhere other than hospital appointments and hasn’t spoken to anyone face to face other than hospital staff and shop assistants for 17 years.
EDIT: I’m still creepily stalking Steve’s social media and I can’t believe this. He now works as a work coach for the DWP - one of those people who makes benefits claimants lives a misery by slave-driving them into unsuitable employment and sanctioning them (stopping their benefits) as punishment. I never thought he’d do a job like this, he used to be a real man of the people, now he’s on the opposing side. He always used to want to be an engineer. I wonder what happened.
The “you get out of it what you put into it,” is difficult when you’re long-term seriously ill. I am struggling intensely just to get through each day, stay on top of my myriad of medical appointments, fight endless benefit assessments and appeals, struggling to access things like food and transport, and even medical care and prescriptions, this is all a full time job while feeling intensely ill and exhausted and having no-one to help. Why is the onus on me to reach out? People who know my situation should be the ones reaching out to me to see if I’m OK, but if there is one thing I have learnt through all this it’s that most people aren’t real friends, as soon as you stop being fun or useful to them and become a burden they just don’t care any more.
this can just be a text message or something. It does sound like youre going through a lot, does your former friend know about this? If it’s been 17 years since you saw him im guessing he doesn’t. The onus isn’t on you or him, it’s not an obligation or responsibility on either persons part, but when two people stop talking and you aren’t sure why then it was a mutual decision(conscious or subconscious) made by both of you. There’s many people I saw often for a while and I don’t talk to or see anymore, and it wasn’t the result of a fight or some other big moment, it just sorta happened. You are right that if people disappear because youre a burden then they are shitty, but you can’t just assume that was the reason either.
He did know about the fact I got diagnosed with cancer. The last time we spoke I invited him to come and see me and he declined, saying he’d been called into work. I called him back later, wanting to say he could just come over afterwards, but there was no answer. I knew his workplace so called him there and his boss told me he hadn’t been called into work. So I just took the hint and left it, and he never called me again. A mutual friend told me, soon after this, that he’d stopped calling him too, it seemed he just wanted to cut ties with his old friends and move on.
well shit im sorry, that’s fucked.