I don’t really know if this is the right place for this, or if it even matters... I think maybe I’m just shouting into a void because I don’t have anywhere else to put it. I’m twenty-six and I’m already divorced, which is its own kind of pathetic, but that’s not really the part that’s making me want to throw my phone across the room tonight. It’s the money. Or the lack of it. Ever since the lawyer fees wiped out my savings and my freelance work started drying up, I’ve had to be... well, careful. I can’t just drop eighty dollars on three artisanal mezcal cocktails on a Tuesday night anymore. I don't know if that makes me a failure or just broke, but it feels like the same thing lately. I used to be part of this group — mostly other designers and "creatives" who work at agencies with exposed brick walls and beer taps in the breakroom. We were always at these places with dim lighting and leather booths where the menu doesn't even have prices on it. I thought they were my friends. We talked about fonts and paper weights and the "vibe" of a space for hours. I remember Julian saying once, while swirling some thirty-dollar bourbon, that he couldn't imagine being friends with someone who didn't appreciate a "curated experience." I laughed then. I thought he was joking. I really don't think he was joking. Then the divorce happened, and suddenly I was living in a studio apartment with a radiator that screams all night and a bank account that’s constantly hovering in the double digits. I tried to keep up at first. I’d order a club soda and say I was on a "health kick," or I’d eat a bowl of generic cereal at home before meeting them so I wouldn't have to buy the thirty-dollar small plates. But eventually, the invites just... stopped. I saw the pictures on Instagram tonight. All of them at that new place on the East Side, the one with the velvet curtains and the secret entrance. I wasn't even asked. Not even a "hey, we're going here if you want to swing by." Just total silence in the group chat for three days and then—BAM—photos of them all clinking glasses. It makes me so incredibly angry. I feel like I’m being PUNISHED for not being able to afford the entrance fee to my own social life. It’s like as soon as I couldn't pay for the aesthetic, I stopped existing as a person to them. I spent years listening to them talk about their "art" and their "visions," and it turns out it was all just built on top of a pile of expensive gin. They don't want a friend, they want an accessory that fits the room. I’m sitting here in the dark with a warm PBR and I want to scream at them. I want to tell them how shallow and predictable they are, but I know it would just make me look bitter. Which I am.