I met a girl through a mutual friend around a year ago, and she was a really cool person and someone I really wanted to be friends with. But when I’m in social situations, I usually get extremely quiet and give short responses because of social anxiety. People usually interpret it as me being either politely disinterested or just boring, and I think that’s what happened with her. We haven’t spoken in a few months and I really want to reach out, but I’m really nervous and don’t know what to say.
To be clear, I’m 90% sure she doesn’t dislike me or anything as she was always very kind and patient with me. I think she just got tired of trying to break me out of my shell with little success, which is completely understandable. This time I would be putting in effort to open up more and be a good friend. But how do I even start the conversation?? I don’t want to sound boring or superficial again. Asking the mutual friend for help also isn’t an option because we aren’t friends anymore (for unrelated reasons).