So for the first time, I decided to invite a bunch of furry friends to my birthday on March 5th. Was going to happen before we all went to the movies with the rest of the Vt Furs at 5pm.

One of them had work, and another had to cancel because their friend they were going to be with for the movie wasn't comfortable coming. Both understandable, and not a big deal.

Then, the anti-mask law in Burlington was suspended for Mardi Gras. So an extremely short notice meetup was started. One of the two furries still going to my birthday canceled to go to Mardi Gras. Fine, my birthday was going to have 4 people, two sets of 2 people that didn't even know each other. It was going to suck, so I can't blame them for bailing.

So now my birthday is down to 1 furry and my only 2 friends I had in high school. Well the Mardi Gras meet also prompted the Vt Furs to change the movie meetup to 2 hours later.

I COULD salvage it. I COULD go to the Mardi Gras meet from 11:30-3, which just so happens to end when I told my non-furry friends to come for my birthday. Then I have dinner and go to the movie at 7pm.

But Mardi Gras is a costume thing. Everyone's going to be suiting. And just like every other time the focus is on suiters I'm going to be excluded, and end up feeling lonely and depressed.

I don't know if I can even enjoy the movie meet, because seeing them will remind me of how depressed I am right now.

And my two non-furry friends? I don't deserve them at all. Growing up, I had all my emotions turned off to protect myself. I didn't know what friends were until I moved to Arizona. To me, they were just people I could use to waste time waiting for class. After 3 years of not talking to them while I was in Arizona, I came back. And they still considered me a friend. One of them even loaned me a monitor when my laptop screen broke. Even now, I rarely talk to them because I feel like I don't deserve them.