I'm doing everything I'm supposed to do, and I've never been more alone

This is what happens when you burn all your bridges. I'm looking back on a selfish life that still casts a terrific shadow on the present. Every one of my old friends is doing better than me, I know it. I can't stand to see social media. They're all so happy and married and alive. And me, I'm dead. I've been dead for years.

The days of binging and hospitalizations are far behind me, but I'm haunted. I don't know who I am--not that I ever did. Drugs didn't hold the answers. Relationships didn't make me whole. I simply dragged everyone down with me. Now I'm alone.

To my credit, I'm grateful for each day because I know I would be physically dead if the occasional car crash had been an inch to the left or the right. That's something, I guess. I've learned to appreciate the fact that I made it out of a toxic lifestyle. This is better than it was, but like I said to my shrink, if this is as good as it gets, I don't want it.

I owe an enormous debt to the people still contributing to my life, and that just makes me squirm with guilt. There are people who love me, yet I'm incapable of accepting it. I hate that so much. I hate that I'm not really there even when I'm physically there. Their goodwill just passes over me and through me, never touching a fiber of me.

Sometimes I think that there's something wrong with me that was there all along before any trauma occurred. I was born to be unhappy, created to suck the people around me dry until they, too, fell into the abyss. I was just unlucky with the gene pool. I was dealt a bad hand, but every time I draw again, it comes up the same. I'm a dud. A reject. A defective, malfunctioning, broken thing. I don't merit an explanation or a second thought. I represent everything wrong with the world.

To anyone reading this, I implore you to keep your friends close. If you decide you're the most important person in the world, you'll find yourself alone. Eventually, you'll find out exactly what it means to be truly and completely empty.