Just had a real slap in the face reminder of how badly my life turned out.

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.