This.

OP: Sounds like your friends are a little insecure or uncomfortable around risk takers like yourself. They're not cut from the same cloth. Truth is, most people in our society aren't. They're play-it-safe types, and to them, stepping outside the lines is tantamount to insanity. Many of these folks will take corporate jobs, or law jobs, and lead lives of reasonably well-compensated misery. None of them will be paid nearly what his lost days and months and years are actually worth; this is felt intangibly, in the back of his mind, like a dull pain whose cause he can't quite pin down.

Learn to draw strength from within, and not to depend so much on external cues of approval or disapproval. Because guess what? Most people in your life are always going to disapprove of entrepreneurial decisions, or outside-the-norm inclinations. If you're always looking outward for validation, you're never going to get it.

Unfortunately, failure is the risk we outside-the-norm types face. We roll the dice, even if we try to roll them intelligently. And so, you failed this time. The dice came up empty. It sucks. I can't possibly tell you it doesn't, and I won't try to sugar coat it. It cuts you to your very soul, and it weighs you down. It makes you feel worthless and helpless. I've been there myself, and I know the feeling all too well. But the important thing is that you don't let a failure become failure. Learn from this one. You'll need time to get back on your feet, rebuild, and distance yourself from the emotional impact of this failure. But eventually, when you're strong enough, you're going to want to revisit it. Because you'll find quite a bit of experiential knowledge in it. When you confront your failure and really get to the bottom of it -- really understand why it happened -- you'll know what not to do next time.

The difference between people who fail, and people who are failures, is that the former learn from their mistakes. They draw wisdom from them, so they don't repeat them. That's what matters.