Does money make things easier? Yes. Does money buy you connections to other people? No. It doesn't. It makes it exceptionally hard to trust why another person who wants to be around you.

There is absolutely no comparison to survival needs and luxury. Of course it is easier to handle life, but who wants to have a life with no true connection? Who wants to grow up raising their brother at 8 years old, not because their parents were drug-addicted or mentally ill, but because they simply valued their jobs more than their children? The simple fact is, most families are not what they seem. What others believed my childhood was like is so far off from the truth it's laughable.

That kind of rejection, while unintentional, creates a lot more issues. I couldn't assign an excuse to my parents inability to raise me. They were both smart and loving, but they are entirely self-made individuals, and thus, they took more pride in loving their jobs than their children. I was second to the hospital for my entire life and expected to care for my infant brother at age 8. My parents were uninvolved in my school life unless there was an issue and only seemed to realize they weren't involved in much of my life at all at age 16. By then the damage was done and if I learned anything, it's to only have kids if you want to raise them yourself.

There's also the fact that unlimited access can lead to unlimited access to drugs and no supervision meant no one gave a shit whether I was there or not unless they needed something from me.

You can have all the money in the world, but at the end of the day, the real meaning of life comes from connection. I value experience over almost anything else in my life because these are the things I can hold onto. Money is paper, easily gained but more easily lost. You could go out and rob someone right now and gain money or you could be the person who was robbed. If you are poor and you have a friend, you know they are your friend because of you. If you are rich and have a friend, there are many reasons that person could be your friend and you don't know what those reasons are until they unfold and it's too late.

There are a lot of things about being rich that are great, but there are a lot of things I didn't have because I was born one of the "privileged".