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, benefit assessors 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.
I guess I've come to accept my basic situation, the sickness and disability are just a part of life now, that's not going away. But the way society treats me makes it so much worse than it needs to be. I get reassessed for my benefits so frequently, it can take up to a year to go through the assessment process, then I get failed and have to go through appeal, and then if I win I get granted as little as two years before going through it all again. During these times I have no income, get into debt as deep as I can before they stop offering me more credit, and now I've ended up here begging for handouts. It's this aspect which makes it so much worse because it just doesn't have to be like this, society has decided to make it like this because it hates disabled and unemployed people so much. There's also the constant threat of losing benefits permanently or being forced to work in this state, the government is always threatening these things. So even when I manage to pass a benefit assessment or win an appeal, I just live in a constant state of anxiety about how soon I have to go through it again, and there's never enough time to pay off all the debts I've accrued during periods of no income. This will just never end.
And even on mutual aid, sometimes there's no response, or it takes weeks and multiple posts to get a response. Thank god someone sent me a supermarket voucher this last time, but I'm always worried when it runs out nobody might respond again, it's literally the only way I have to eat as the food bank only gives 9 days worth of food every 6 months, and all other sources of help have been stopped. I always have so many things I need but can't buy, like right now I really need laundry disinfectant (because my skin is covered with infections that spread) but no-one is answering that mutual aid request, and there are various items I always need like eczema cream, that runs out quickly and things like that, but there's no point making more mutual aid posts if the previous one hasn't been answered. And just for some enjoyment in life, I wish I could order a takeaway and pay for the TV series I want to watch but there's no point making mutual aid requests for a justeat gift card or amazon gift card, they are unlikely to be answered.
It just makes life suck more than it needs to having to beg for everything, relying on charity and knowing that even if I win my benefit appeal it will only be for a short time, then I might have to go through this again repeatedly until I finally die. Death is the only thing that will end this situation and even then I'm so paranoid that hell exists and I will go there (for shoplifting, which i've done a lot of over the years due to poverty). it just feels like there's no escape, ever.