Unfortunately, our society being a capitalist one, has madee every form of entertainment an expense of some kind. When people like to "go out" it will always involve a cost of some kind and that makes socializing difficult for people like myself, for instance, who struggle on low income or no income, and these people so often withdraw from social activity, feeling bad because we cannot throw money away on such frivolous items. Little do we realize how many other people are also getting closer to this economic status and cannot do it like that used to but they still want to keep up the social image.

For those of us who cannot be in the social scenes, we withdraw and detach ourselves often from people who seem to do better than ourselves, financially, because we do not feel comfortable hearing their daily stories of things they do or places they go or being invited to things we cannot afford to accept. Slowly we lose contact with these people because we have begun to say No to all of the invitations extended. Then we get angry because we have lost contact with friends.

I have been invited out to people's places but they are out of town and I cannot drive so I cannot get out to see them. One of my cousins does understand that I am struggling with this depression and she still extends an invitation when she sees me but I feel guilty for asking them to come pick me up and my work shifts make it difficulty for me to be available when the gang get together. So I am not in the social loop anymore. They do not dislike me....I am just not available whenever they extend invitations so the invitations have disappeared.

I guess what I am trying to say is that many times our social isolation is not solely due to other people's actions and decisions. Our own actions and decisions can push people out of our lives without us realizing it.