Has this ever happened to you? You are hanging with your friends at school and they say they are not doing anything this coming weekend and later you see on Instagram or Snapchat that they were doing things all day without you. Or, you get put in a group chat to plan an event or large get-together and nothing gets settled in the chat, but later you see on their Snapchat story that they all are having a great time, without you. Planning things out yourself but no one wants to go. This has happened too many times to me. I just want to ask all the friends out there why? Why leave people out?

I know how it feels to be left out. Some of my friends go out every weekend, some hang out during the week. They just hang out all the time, without me. Even when I invite people to do things with me they don’t respond. I understand that it's not always on purpose or that they want to hang with specific people, but it hurts none the less when I see them have fun on their Snapchat stories or Instagram posts.

I’ve always been a confident person, my self-esteem was high, I loved myself and that all stopped when my friends stopped hanging out with me. I didn’t understand why they stopped inviting me to things, and I still don’t today. Without the support of my friends I started to question myself; was I too annoying, fat, stupid, mean for my friends. Did they not want to be my friend anymore?

We rely on our friends to help us become better versions of ourselves, to let loose and have fun. Friends give us a chance to grow and become the best version of you that you can be. I felt as if I lost that, even if they would still talk to me at school. They didn’t connect with me where we can have most of the fun in our lives.

People all over the world feel this way, they feel left out and forgotten. My advice to those people out there who feel like they have no one else is to stay true to who you are, don’t change what you like about yourself just for other people. If they don’t like something about you that you love, they don’t deserve your friendship. Tell your friend that you feel like you are being left out, be direct with them. Sometimes people are clueless and never recognized that you felt this way. Being subtle will get you nowhere. You need to put yourself out there, good things might happen. Just don’t blame your friends for something they didn’t notice everyone can be clueless from time to time.