‘I’m Broke and Mostly Friendless, and I’ve Wasted My Whole Life’
(Edit: see, the internet alone is part of what is wrong with the world. I share that I feel completely alone and miserable and what does the internet do? Downvote. Did you bother to comment negatively or just provide some sort of reason as to why you don&#x27;t like my comment? Nah, &#x27;here have a downvote&#x27; because you&#x27;re safe and comfortable in your anonymity where you can freely show someone you don&#x27;t like them because they have a different experience or opinion than you and have decide their worth is less than yours)<p>I&#x27;m broke, friendless and have nothing remotely resembling a meaningful life.<p>I however have not moved all over the place, I live 15 minutes from my childhood home and spend 90% of my life living in the same 3 blocks.<p>As far as family I barely have any left. My mother and my half-brother.<p>The bulk of my social interaction is via emails with one individual. On the occasions they reply, they&#x27;re very terse due to how busy the individual is. I&#x27;ve met them once, for all of maybe 25 minutes. Other than that I mostly just talk to bun, a purple stuffed anthropomorphic rabbit I&#x27;ve had all but a few weeks of my life. As a child I was only invited to a few birthday partings or outings, as an adult I occasionally get asked why I wasn&#x27;t at so and so&#x27;s event &#x27;well, I didn&#x27;t even know about it...&#x27; and I was invited to a wedding of someone I went to school with from kindergarten on a couple of years ago, I was even sat at the head table with her father, with the exception of her insisting on a dance with me not a single person talked to me with the exception of the bartender taking my order. At one point I simple gave up and stood quite literally outside looking in, literally in the shadows outside of the barn the reception was at until the bartender cut me off and my contacts were gone through to find someone to collect me and my car.<p>The few seemingly like-minded people I&#x27;ve found are famous multi-millionaires and billionaires that live thousands of miles from me that I have effectively zero chance of ever interacting with. Put a gun to my head and I wouldn&#x27;t be able to begin to tell you how one makes a friend because the only person that believes in any amount is essentially a stranger that I&#x27;ve met once and likely may never meet again.<p>I don&#x27;t even know how to talk to people. I&#x27;m 33 and I&#x27;ve never actually had anything approximating a proper romantic relationship. I&#x27;ve never had a best friend that I do things with. I&#x27;ve never been part of a group carrying on and having experiences. I&#x27;ve never had to deal with a breakup, or co-habitated, or fought with a romantic partner. I&#x27;ve never had anyone phone me just to see how I was doing. I get a birthday card from corporate and sometimes from my mother when she remembers and that&#x27;s the extent of my birthday being acknowledged.<p>The last person I got close to romantically, shot and killed themselves after we&#x27;d had 3 proper dates.<p>At 33 I have a GED and no college degree, I&#x27;ve filed bankruptcy, I&#x27;ve been in the same job for 12 and a half years. I&#x27;m one mild financial emergency away from being fucked.<p>I might as well just be a robot although, if I was a robot I&#x27;d probably have more human interaction purely from curiosity in me.<p>If things don&#x27;t change professionally, in very drastic ways, I&#x27;ll work until the day I die. I&#x27;m lucking if I can put 2-3 grand into my 401k each year.<p>While the woman writing to this columnist says she hasn&#x27;t even the energy to contemplate humanity... that&#x27;s about all I have going for me. I sit back and think about the nearly 40 gigatons of carbon dioxide we will put into the atmosphere this year, the microplastics in the air we breathe and the water we drink, the myopic and manipulated views of the world technology is giving to the masses, the growing wealth divide. I suppose I have more in common with a hypothetical artificial general intelligence though as I lack most of the experiences humans share in common.<p>She&#x27;s 35 and had a cancer scare. My father died of cancer 12 days before my 13th birthday, his mother died before him of cancer, my mother had thyroid cancer which is in remission. Cancer is a highly probable death for me too ma&#x27;am.<p>Oh the drink, I know the drink well. At one point I was drinking as much as a fifth a night just to chase that fleeting escape from reality where everything amuses you.  It&#x27;s a trap ma&#x27;am, run from the drink, forsake the drink, the drink is a lie.<p>She may be a ghost but she isn&#x27;t alone and to be honest her life experiences sound like quite the upgrade to mine.<p>Sure, there&#x27;s people out there with it far worse than us. Simply having electricity and being able to read makes us far better off than many millions. Knowing that doesn&#x27;t make life any less empty and cold and lonely though.