Dear Casual Acquaintances on Facebook

Maybe we were classmates, drinking buddies, or we met through other friends.  We haven't talked in a very long time, but I knew you well enough to accept your friend request.  If I was the one that sent the friend request, most likely it was because I like you and wanted to keep in touch, or I disliked you enough to want to keep tabs on you.  Regardless of the reason we are Facebook friends, we are most likely not great friends in real life.  For that reason, I just need one thing from you: please don't make me feel worse about myself.

I realize that I have gotten to the age where my peers are getting married, having kids, buying houses, and getting high paying jobs.  I also realize that to a degree it is my fault that I am living in a state of semi stunted maturity.  Maybe that is why I feel so bad off.  If I were living in some Maxim magazine, high-school/college was the best time of my life, sleeping with a different woman every weekend after getting drunk while I rage against the dying of my 20's, I could be happy.  Maybe I would be happy if I had achieved more than just a couple socially accepted milestones that I should have passed at this point in my life.  I am somewhere in between these two choices, which means I sit around and constantly question my life choices.

Seeing that the woman I met a few times through some high school friends has just had her third kid, or that the guy that used to sell pot on my hall freshman year of college has his doctorate and has really gotten his life together does not make me feel like I have won the Good Life Sweepstakes.  The high point of my week was having a good sandwich and then treating myself to a cigar after watching the Phillies game.  That's how low my expectations have become.  If something extraordinarily fun and entertaining were to come around, I might have to stab myself in the leg just to bring some balance to the jubilation I feel. 

Maybe, before you post pictures of your happy and productive lives, you should think about how those pictures are going to affect that big guy you met at that party a few years back.  You know, the one who posts those angry things all the time.  It might seem like you are rubbing it in, just how good things turned out for you. Viewed through that lens, it would seem like you are a real jerk for posting stuff like that, wouldn't it?  That'd be like going to a  hospital and rubbing it in that you have properly functioning organs.

Do you feel good about yourself now?