So yeah, when I was a young kid I was... well, "cringe" I guess, basically since birth. So cringe that at a certain point in middle school most if not literally all the kids in my grade wanted absolutely nothing to do with me. Now granted this wasn't do due me being difficult or antagonistic. I don't know how to explain it really. Anytime I tried to connect anybody from any age group I was met with disgust and confusion and it pained me. I was taught to "be yourself and people will like you for who you are", and then when people didn't like me being me I made increasingly desperate attempts to be more funny, charismatic and relatable to my peers, which were met with even harsher rejection and mockery. I cried every night, I was scared to go to school, and I was suicidal by age 11. Some

After I had moved schools and countries a short time later, I liked to think I took a step back after all the trauma to stay in the background and "observe" people like biologist observing the behavior of owls or something. I spent time people watching, looking for patterns and people's speech and their clothes to give clues about who they are and what they respond to, I've got good enough at reading people as a result that I can use that skill to function in day-to-day social interactions.

At least this is what I used to tell myself. Upon some recent reflections, my supposedly Sherlockian people-reading skills seem to have been mostly a story I told myself to make myself feel better about shutting down socially throughout most of my teenage years and adult life. The only thing that actually changed in my social practices after I was given a clean slate, is that in my mind social interaction was no longer a key component of the human experience that I felt as a need, but rather an obstacle of day-to-day life to be plotted on and carefully navigated. Rather than developing an understanding of human beings, what I had actually developed was a system of mimicked responses I had heard other people use frequently. As a result I can hold a small talk conversation with a stranger or acquaintance without raising any alarm bells because everything I said was like "how was your weekend" "yeah that's life" "wow that's crazy". Also as a result, I find it extremely difficult to make actual human connections with anybody who isn't also socially awkward, to whom I might seem comparatively competent. Lately it seems the system has been failing me. I've been struggling to come up with responses to common questions or expressions. I understand every word people are saying to me but it's like they're speaking a different language because I have no idea what to say back to them. I spent my whole life trying to avoid feeling 10 years old again and I'm back here already.

I have no lifelong friends, I don't have anyone I hang out with on weekends. When I was a kid, I was desperate to have a girlfriend and made constant embarrassing attempts to court one. Now that I'm 23 and I've groomed myself into being a phony but perfectly inoffensive NPC, I've still never had a girlfriend because I've been too traumatized to put myself out there enough to try for one, and I probably don't come across as interesting enough to warrant the attention unprompted. And now I'm in an awkward position where I've effectively missed out on young love, where most people learn key lessons on maintaining a relationship and emotional development that prepare them for dating as an adult. Now I'm effectively at a developmental disadvantage where most people have already been through that shit several times and are ready to start looking for something real. Even if I could, I don't want to hurt somebody by getting into a relationship while being emotionally unavailable just generally not knowing what to do, but at the same time I feel this clock ticking as I perpetually becoming a less appropriate potential partner as I grow older and my level of experience remains mostly unchanged. And now I'm here ranting to Reddit again about how I want to kill myself because I got bullied in fucking middle school and haven't touched a woman in years like the complete cliche that I am, which I'm sure does not help matters.

Has anyone else been through this experience? I just need to know there's a way out of this, I want to relearn my personality and feel like myself again but what if it's too much for people to handle?