Will I ever feel good enough?

I live my life based around kindness. I’m generous, I listen, I help where I can and will drop anything to support someone who needs it. I try to live my life without prejudice, seeing people as unique and individual. I don’t see race, gender, sexual orientation, class or any other society-generated label. I just try to be kind, considerate, caring and empathic while offering strength and guidance where I feel it’s needed/wanted. I laugh as much as possible and believe life should be fun and should be enjoyed.

Basically, I just try to be a good person.

Yet none of the above has ever felt like enough to make friends, keep friends or be considered a good person to be around. I’ve spent a lot of my time wondering what people really do think of me, or how they feel about me. I worry I’m not coming across well, or I’m saying or doing the wrong thing so people won’t want to be around me. It’s something I’ve done for a while and to be honest, I guess you get used to that feeling.

Recently I was asked to be best man for someone who I considered a friend, a good friend. On the surface we’re mates, but over the last 12 years to be honest he’s been a bad one. I’ve been cancelled on to the point where I’m ready to go out and receive a text to say “I’ll leave it”, I’ve been ditched when out in town without so much as a goodbye because they’ve gone home with some random girl, I wait 2-3 days for a reply to a text and in fact, I spent the last 6 weeks trying to meet up with them to be cancelled on/ignored. Sounds like a treat, doesn’t he?! All of this though, yet I still tried my hardest to hang onto the friendship because to be honest, I’m a bit of a loner and it’s pretty much all I’ve got.

Well last week, I was supposed to go on the stag (LAD) do which was in another country, and timing wise it couldn’t have been worse. I’d paid up all the money and was booked to go when we started our IVF journey and with even as much planning as we could do the two fell completely at the same time. I deliberated for a long time what I should do, do I leave my girlfriend to go through it all on her own while I live it up in Ibiza taking shots of vodka through my eye balls, or do I stay here and experience this potentially life changing miracle together. I decided the latter meant more to me so I messaged my mate and explained the issue to him. Understandably, he went cold, and throughout the early part of the treatment I heard nothing from him before receiving a phone call to ask “are you coming or not?”. I explained I wasn’t, and that’s the last I’ve heard.

Since then, there’s been a group chat that was set up initially with the rest of the attendees in, and to be honest I’m finding it quite difficult. Photos, different messages, “best time ever mate” sent back and forth, and what looks like a group of lads who have become a group of friends. Friends that I don’t have, and that a part of me is now thinking “I could have been a part of that”.

Don’t get me wrong, I made the absolute right decision, and I stand by it. Not only is the whole IVF process something completely different and unique, and there’s no way on this earth I’d have let me girlfriend go through it alone, but also because I’m almost 32, weigh 2 stone more than I should and would look like the biggest plonker sat on an inflatable unicorn in Ocean Beach. However, that doesn’t take away from the fact that I feel I’ve missed out massively. Not so much on the stag do because to be honest they’re not really my scene, but I do feel I’ve missed out on creating friendships and mixing with new people because I tried to do the right thing.

So here I am, sat reading through messages I wish I were a part of, from a group of people I wish I were a part of, wondering whether I’ll ever be the sort of person that just mingles and makes friends. Right now, my brain just pins this whole thing on me, my personality and who I am. I just wonder if I’ll ever feel good enough?