I'm 30 and I'm alone and it's tough to pretend I'm a whole person. 

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I haven't made a friend since high school. I'm starting to befriend someone at work but it's giving me a lot of anxiety because - when am I going to say The Thing that makes her hate me? It feels like I have to do everything right to be social, or maybe I'm missing something that everyone else has, or maybe I'm just not cut out to be social. But to have friends you have to answer them -when they fucking text- regardless of what's going on in my life, and I just don't have the energy to keep up with that. I recently had someone tell me I was probably not doing well on Bumble BFF because I'm a slow responder. Sometimes I don't know what to say, sometimes words aren't happening in my brain, sometimes I'm just too tired. Maybe missing out on social things for all of my 20's is something I'm never going to be able to recover from. 

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I've been in a lot of workplaces where I was "the loser." I had no friends, I'd catch people saying mean things about me, they all get together with each other and I'm not invited. I've been in multiple situations where groups of people don't like me and do shitty, passive-aggressive things to me every chance they get. I don't know what I do wrong. I try to just be a genuine, kind person. I get feedback that I'm nice, I know I'm not perfect but at least I've had some feedback that I'm not totally delusional to think I'm a nice person. But there have also been a few times where I know what I said. There have been a few times when I can pinpoint the off comment that makes someone turn on me, and it must be more than one off comment because it's always easy for that person to get a group to turn on me. It's terrifying to feel like at any moment, I can slip up and someone will just decide I'm not worth their time. 

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And I never feel like I say the right thing. Some of my coworker's responses are lackluster (think "lol") and I just wonder if she even wants to talk to me? Making friends gives me the same anxiety that trying to date someone gives me. That's kind of fucked up, I should probably not care so much whether or not someone decides they want to be my friend. But also it affects me. I feel like I'm not worthy of friendship because so many people have decided I'm not worth their time. And honestly this is a big moment for me because this is the moment I realize I've internalized all that rejection and got to where I don't feel good enough for friendship. Why would someone pick me when I'm a ball of nerves? Why would someone want to hang out with someone who only feels like half a person? 

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Lately I've been doing okay relative to the last 10 years. I finally got a job that doesn't feel like Chinese water torture. I'm on medication and that helps a ton. I'm a lot better about not letting myself slip into negative thought patterns. This week I haven't been feeling the overwhelming cloud of misery because I finally got medication that isn't expired and I'm taking it regularly. But every time I think about social stuff, it just gives me this.... squished feeling? I can't name the feeling but it's visceral, my body feels shitty. I'm going on a vacation with my mom and her work friends in a month and I'm so fucking nervous because what if I do The Thing that makes everyone hate me? I don't even know what the fucking thing is!! But spending four days with people who are talking crap about you in a small space.... I did that around this time last year and it was so bad. 

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Okay. 

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I'm a solution-oriented person and part of my problem is that I don't know how to fix this part of my life. I don't really know what the solution is to feeling unworthy of friendship. It took me eight years to figure out the solution to hating myself, and honestly even though it's a struggle it's also worth it to fight through those feelings and find an even timbre. Social situations are just approached totally differently from a mental health perspective. I've googled "How to feel less lonely" and the fucking answer was Make Friends. How do you make friends when you feel like nobody wants to be your friend (And for good reason!)? Therapists have basically told me to find a group and the friendships will happen naturally, but there's not a huge meet up scene in my area and I have a ton of anxiety about going to one, and the few I have been to were not great. I couldn't read the book on "How to Influence People and Never Feel Powerless Again," I got halfway through it and it honestly felt like customer service kiss-ass bullshit, but this time I'm not even getting paid for it. That book makes me feel like I have to scrub my personality clean and poke myself into a small box to be socially acceptable. 

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I just don't know. I'm going to keep trying different things. I'm going to keep putting myself out there because the only other choice is to keep doing things the same shitty way with the same shitty outcome. 

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I needed this rant today and if anyone actually manages to read all that, thanks for your time and I hope both our days get better.