It makes me sad to think about how much I became a ghost in my circle of friends in the last few years. Group dinners, vacations, brunches, shopping trips, nights out at bars and clubs just became less and less a part of my existence until most of the time nobody really bothered to try to include me. I never blamed any of my friends for that; you can only decline invitations because you're literally too poor to participate for so long until people just stop asking. I'm lucky, or perhaps unlucky enough depending on how you look at it, to have some incredibly successful friends who worked really hard and put in the effort to become very well paid in their respective jobs. It's not so much that you envy your friends' success or are jealous of them, it's more that being around people who you consider your peers who all managed to "make it" when you yourself continually stumble and fall makes you question whether you really even belong with that crowd. Being the only fuck up in the room becomes a pretty dark cloud that you'd rather not expose anyone to after a while.
- Christian Gabriel
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