My college roommate (I’ll call her Olivia here) from last year recently moved to my very rural town for the winter to work here and enjoy the snow. You would think because I lived with Olivia for a year, hung out with her many times, and went on a vacation with her I wouldn’t be so anxious to hangout with her, but sadly not the case. 

While living together we also had a third roommate (I’ll call her Callie) who shared a room with me. Bc Callie and I shared a room I was forced to become very comfortable with her. Whenever we’d all hangout as a house I would always have Callie with me; **Callie, like Olivia, was very social and not at all socially anxious so when it was the three of us I felt very comfortable bc their outgoingness really balanced out my social anxiety.** We also lived in a type of communal housing focused on creating a welcoming and friendly environment for everyone and we lived next door to another larger house in that communal system, so there were always multiple people to hangout with. There was usually always a bunch of people coming and going in and out of our house. **Basically what I’m saying is despite living with Olivia for a year I’ve never actually hung out with her by myself. Even when we went of vacation a bunch of people came.**

Since moving here a few days ago Olivia has already asked to hangout, and I said I would like to but couldn’t until tomorrow. Knowing Olivia, I know she’s going to meet people at work when she starts, and I’ve already seen her out hiking around the area by herself on social media. One of my big regrets about our time living together was not hanging out with her more bc I think she’s really cool and nice. She literally took my under her wing and let me be friends with her many, many friends when I had none.  I’m afraid once she meets people she won’t ask me to hangout, I feel like I have a window of opportunity to establish myself as someone to hang with. 

I have two high school friends in my hometown and neither of them like hiking or doing outdoor things like Olivia does, this is my chance to finally have a friend to do things like this with at home. **But I’m afraid Olivia expects me to come up with things to do in the area because I’m from here, and since it’s so rural and mostly shut down bc of the pandemic there’s not a lot to do except hike and ski, and those activities require a fair amount of one on one talking** which is something I’ve really struggled with in the past while forming new friendships 

Any advice at all is really appreciated. I know I have anxiety but the social aspect is something I rarely try to work on

TL/DR - my super social college roommate moved to my hometown and I want to hangout with her but I’m afraid of my social anxiety making me freeze up when we do things like hiking that require me to talk a lot