Hi all. This week has been exhausting. I dont have anyone to talk to in my first two classes of the day. Everytime I walk in, I feel the fake eyes on my back, judging the way I look, judging how I walk, judging how quiet I am, etc. My lunch is an exhausting experience. I have friends, but I feel like I'm not connected to them anymore. They laugh at stuff I don't find funny. I fake laugh so much to hide the silence that I feel fake around them. I never know what to say back in a conversation. I just try my best to seem like I know what's going on, but i dont. When my family members were in school, they had friends to constantly hang out with. They were always able to have fun with them, and they have genuine goofs and laughs together. I wish I had that. I only have one friend that really gets my sense of humor, but they dont go to my school anymore. All of the friends I had went from being one group, to everyone going to different groups. I dont feel like I fit in with *any* of them. I've tried everything to make new friends, to get along with people, and to have fun with my friends again. The pandemic really ruined my social life. It's what made me develop social anxiety in the first place. It was always there before, but it got amplified. I'm at the point where I dont even want to call my friends on the phone outside of school because I'm terrified of that awkward silence, or the fake laughter. Another thing that makes it difficult is the fact that I feel like I'm the only one that puts effort to communicate in. They never reach out to me, I always do. It makes me feel like that if I just stopped hanging out with them, their lives wouldn't change much. Do they even need me? Do they care about me in the same way I care about them? On top of that, I recently overheard someone saying they're "not surprised" that I've never had a girlfriend before. They apologized a lot about it, but it made me more insecure. I wanna know what she meant by that. Is it because I'm annoying? God I fucking hate social anxiety. I'm not specifically looking for any advice here, I just want to see if I'm alone here or not.