Hey I need genuine advices, and needed to vent a bit if you don’t mind 😛
Okay so, I (20M) was not really social and active before high-school years and I didn’t really have much friends. Got both physically and mentally bullied in school. Eventually I developed a social anxiety.
I really pushed myself to have friends and socialize in high-school. In senior year, my only friends were moved out of the city because of college. I don’t know exactly when or what triggered it but at some point depression kicked in maybe because of my loneliness. I also slowly developed body dysmorphia too. I was feeling fat and ugly. So thats when things started to snowballed. I started turn down the meet-ups because of my body image and severe anxiety. It was kind of a vicious circle that I end up with being antisocial.
I spent one year without going outside or having a new friend and fighting with depression. My parents forced me to sign up for a college near to us, beginning of this semester. I actually wanted to go college too because it obviously could be a good place to socialize and I didn’t want to waste my potential on local store at young age. Anyways, I got in. Beginning of this semester, they decided to make %90 of the classes online so I could only met couple people from the same class but it was so shallow. Also my social anxiety was still there. I was at school for 1-2 hours and went back to home for whole 2 semester. At face-to-face exams, I see a lot of people already met up and I totally felt alone once again. It was really a slap on my face that I was all alone for my whole life and couldn’t even make a single friend in whole freshman year. If everybody else can make friends and I can’t, obviously I am the problem here.
I assumed it was about my body and started working out at home and did some dieting. Maybe I rely on that “If I lose weight and be more physically acceptable, I’ll no longer be alone magically!” Thus, I lost around 65+lbs and started to do selfcare. It actually helped me to not get anxious about my body as much as I was before and I became more confident. But It was not the main problem and I was still waiting for people to come at me to meet or else **I don’t know how**. I’ve met couple of people too by starting the conversations on my side but as I said it was so shallow and nobody seemed to really interested in me or neither I do.
Long story short, I don’t know how to meet and become friends with people or socialize after isolation with 20 years of long low confidence. Because it seems like everyone at my age made their own friend circle and I think almost impossible to break in or join without looking creepy. Also I get anxious a lot about thinking if I am too late to make new friends or I just wasted my years by being all alone and end up with being social outcast. I think it’s an another vicious circle that if you don’t have friend, people find you creepy and you can’t make new friend. Also the summer triggered me a lot beucase I always see people having the times of their lifes, going to concerts, holidays or just drink couple drinks at a cafe with their friends and I don’t wanna be like this on my next summer. But I am ready, I feel like a bird set free but don’t know how to fly. I really don’t want to waste a second on social anxiety, fears etc. I just need a little guidance from people who had been into a similar situation, or somebody is good at making new friends without looking creepy. I just don’t want to be “super popular” or something, but couple of friends wouldn’t be bad because sometimes the loneliness is hard to bear.
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Bonus: It’s even really hard to do that online. I met someone, turns out they are minor and I cut the conversation immediately. Or I write something on Twitter-Discord chats, nobody replies or it goes shallow and they won’t remember or bother to write to me and continue chatting their other friends. And sometimes most of the people ignores. I do regret a lot If i write something and want to delete it immediately.
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