I've always found it hard to talk to people about anything, even if its about my interests. For like the past 5 years I've only really had 1 friend I regularly talk to, and even with him Ive always felt so distant and absent that we never really have a conversation thats longer than 3 minutes. I'm not sure if its social anxiety or something else but it frustrates me how I only ever get worse.
Just putting this out there
I'm sorry, I know what that's like. I'm already at the point I can barely talk comfortably to anyone besides my parents. It never felt like my friends actually liked me. I acted really weird and autistic and still do so even the few good social memories I have sting a little because I always manage to make some ridiculous social blunder and it taints the memory. I wish I was someone else. I'm embarrassed of all my interests and keep them to myself. I can't relate to most people and my values are very different from most people my age. I've also had no romantic or sexual experience at a very late age, so as soon as dating comes up in any conversation I'll be outed as a loser.
I try to find comfort in knowing even if I was confident enough to express myself and socialize, I would still end up isolated and ostracized. Maybe you don't feel the same, but there's just a wall in front of you. I used to be able to socialize much better buzzed (not drunk) but be extremely careful with alcohol. I recommend never touching hard liquor, especially if you have anger issues.
same i miss being a child so much that most of my dreams take me back to when i was a child where i still had friends to do stupid shit with
My childhood was pretty awful and I still miss it so much just because I was around more people and was still looking forward to the future. Everything was simpler and I still felt like a real person. I could live with being me back then.
I had struggled with making connections also.
If I had to give one advice then it would be - genuinely be intrested to learn more about other person and ask questions.
This is very important advice too. And try hard to expand your interests so you can be genuinely interested in more people even if they are different. But also seek out people like yourself if tou can, if there are any around you. If you are nerdy, hang out with nerds, etc. Mutual interests make real connection much simpler. Even if you tire of the person (which can happen even with people you really like) the interest is still there to keep you together. Think of how many bands have members who go through periods of hating each other but making music keeps them going.
Seek out interests that are easy to talk about with several kinds of people.
And If you have any interests that are dark or controversial, absolutely keep them to yourself, and limit the time you spend with them.
Put as much effort as possible into your appearance.
I know I seem like a bad person to take advice from but I learned all of this the hard way and I wish someone had drilled these lessons into my head before. You might be younger than me and still have a shot.
Sorry if this is rambley I'm currently drunk
yeah I struggle with this too. I miss being a child where no one really cared where you came from, who you were, or anything, a person was a person. Now everyone is a lot more complicated. I can talk to my online friends very well though, I can't talk to anyone irl for social anxiety reasons though
What I find helpful in my friendship to keep conversation is actually to do something like play a game or watch a movie with them since I can bring up those memories with them as conversation points
I miss watching movies and playing games with friends, it really is so much better than watching alone. I had a couple friends where watching anything with them was funny no matter how bad it was.
