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I met for coffee. It was eye opening. I'm still not processing it.

How is it that two people could have such similar experiences and wind up so different?

All I ever, ever do is beat myself up. I'm a failure. I'm overweight. I'm a social retard. I'm unlucky. My life is pathetic.

It isn't. I'm not. I'm stupid for getting caught up in those thoughts, ever. I'm blessed. I'm lucky. And even though there are people I know who are living in New York city and flying to Paris every other weekend, living a movie perfect life, MY life is pretty damn good.

I'm not discounting the hell I've been through, or am going through, or how much I struggle (perceived or real) but the fact is I fared pretty damn well.

I've overcome major medical issues.

I've dug myself out of a debt hole so big that I didn't think there was an end, and now, I can see one faintly in the distance.

I have an apartment.

I have a family (as hard as that is right now).

I've managed to scrape together a few friends.

I have a job. I am damn lucky to have a job.

I measure my worth based on the people who have more than succeeded, and I also have this secret fear that if I allow myself to be happy with what I've got somehow I've failed or God will take it away from me. If I'm always miserable God can't punish me anymore, right? Things can't get any worse? Right?

The girl I met for coffee has had a life eerily similar to me. Same medical problems. Same debt problems. Same crippling set backs that seem cruelly unfair and insurmountable, yet, I sit in a damn nice apartment surrounded by things like furniture and books and clothes and internet and she didn't quite fair the same. Our lives do drastically diverge in several huge areas but short of that I could be in a very, very different place. It is odd, and I haven't really processed it yet. She is in the same place I was a few years ago; holding on to a really bad relationship because it was literally all I had, unable to get a good job, so jacked in the credit department that I couldn't even get power in my own name (thanks to my ex roommate who still owes my 2,500 bucks) and yet today, years later, I'm doing fairly okay. What was the difference? What makes me survive and even, daresay, prosper? I still have no money, I still struggle daily with my demons, but I look around and I just know, I'll be okay. Relatively speaking.

Even though she and I have had very similar life experiences we are totally, absolutely different people. We have everything in common and yet nothing in common.

She's a nice girl who is desperately lonely, very lost, and in a bad place. I suspect that she is doing drugs. She only works part time and dissapears for days. I didn't know what to say when she said that tomorrow is her birthday and she has no one to spend it with, would I please do something with her? Was I not in exactly the same place just weeks ago? Except, still, it wasn't quite the same.

It is a bad situation and I can't get involved, I don't even think I would feel comfortable being light acquaintances, every red flag I have is going off, yet I'm stuck. I can't just not talk to her. I also can't just turn someone down on their birthday when they have no one to hang out with, even if I feel like she is going to wind up with her ex doing drugs later that night.

My whole perspective has changed, conversely, however the big issue is that I'm very conflicted, what should I do?