i don't have any friends. no friends. none.

well, this thread doesn't have to really be just mine. surprisingly, i did a search, and nothing resembling this issue came up. i hope this thread helps other people too, besides me.

i lost all of my friends in my early 20s. i was in the hospital for years. i didn't want to talk to anyone. i had my mom screen my calls. i was sedated and ill. i was sick and on the wrong medicines. i wasn't myself, and i lost all of my friends. i'm really drunk, but i know that there are other friendless people around here. i'm at u-of-m now. researching. but, everyone is younger than me. i don't want to be friends with them.

i really miss being with other people. i drink a lot. my professors don't have a clue. i'm crying.

be mean to me now. pile on. i am crazy and i hate myself. but i'm good looking, and it drives me up the fucking wall. i went out alone 5 times in the last two weeks. i just smoked a lot of cigarettes and gave them to people that walked away from me. they didn't know i'm friendless. i hate myself.

i dunno man i feel like this is pretty common esp after you turn 25ish. i went to university in another city and never contacted or was contacted by anyone from high school. university was supposed to be a dreamland of hangin out drinkin brews talking about books but it turned out to be some bullshit.

i moved around a lot, i still move around a lot and and make a few good friends and then like... this girl is a great friend, i've found the person i wish i had made friends with during undergrad and now she's moving back to melbourne and i'm moving to vancouver... man, i spend 90% of my time with this guy and i'd take a bullet for him and he's moving to scotland and i'm going to shanghai and we end up talking for a bit by email and sending facebook messages back and forth... and then it evaporates because i decide, this is kind of depressing and i had a great friendship with this person but it's impossible to continue it like this.

and if you run into them again, you can usually pick it up like nothing happened but it'll never be the same. but if you don't run into them again, you get a short email a little while later, or a long informative email about their current life and ignore it-- i do, at least.

the worst is when i just move somewhere and i have the twin feelings of: depressing distant relationships kept alive by facebook and going from not knowing anyone to building up a scattered network of acquaintances that you don't want to be friends with and you hate everyone. shit's tough.

keep your head up, big guy.

or don't keep your head up. it's cool either way. i don't want to be pushy.

i didn't even read that yet, but thank you.

hahahahhaha. i bet people know me here. i was at the blue lep in a2 on friday night wearing a pink shirt and khakis.

we can use this thread for george zimmerman fantasy assassination scenarios if you want

now theres a guy that needs a friend

i read it now. thank you. i've been trying to make friends since 23, i'm 27 now. i go out alone a lot. i feel like a terrible person. i wish people knew how lonely i am. no one does. i tell people a lot: "oh, my friend Kay and I did this or that, last weekend". we didn't. i don't have friends. i got drunk with the sundays and considered suicide, last saturday night. the sundays are my only friend. j/k. SERIOUSLY. j/k. i could walk over to the community center, i think, and talk to res-staff right now, i think? (in an emergency). j/k. nothing matters. i'm evil, and insance, and no one likes me - even though i like them. i like them. i wish they knew. i'm really good looking. i just wish people knew.

nobody knows. nobody knows. they'll never know.

didn't read any of this but you seem ok, stop posting drunk, start posting hi????

marijuana, smoke it, post here

who are the sundays?

people like to pretend they/re sad. they might be. and, they might be. they might be sad, but, i'm fucking dead inside. do you see me. do you see me dressed to the nines smoking across the street from stockwell at u-m? i wish someone would just sit with me at lunch or dinner. fine. i'll research sumeria and Mesopotamia alone. i hate myself and want everyone else to. i'm losing my mind. i cry a lot on saturday nights and i don't have any friends. if you think it's a joke then fucking TRY ME. i'm at 2049 in Stockwell and crying right now.

yeah, exclude me from the zimmerman thread. i thought i was being righteous, and yelling at my computer with everyone else. mookie would tell you to stop giving me attention. but, but.

i want other friendless people to find this thread someday. i want to smoke and then pass out.

are you at u mizz or u montana? or another m

don't stress about mookie, he is awesome. you're fine too just kind of annoying.

and i'm sure you have plenty of friends, you're being pretty attention seeking though, don't you think? especially on a thread about something much larger than you.

Sometimes even when you have friends it feels like you do not have friends. Being sad and feeling lonely is a stink that you keep smelling even after you're sure you've washed it out of all of your clothes.

What is it you want from a friend? What do you want to do with friends? What are you going to do for them? Sometimes when you get hung up on the idea of having "friends" it kind of obscures the potential of individual people to become a specific friend. You feel like your need for friendship is so huge and out of proportion that you have to hide it because people might get creeped out. But if no-one knows you want a friend out of them no-one will be able to step up! You kind of have to be ready to ask people on friend dates, to find something you could do together, else you'll never have a chance to become friends.

i mean, you're always kind of petulant on ilx, but i get that you only post when drunk and stressed and kind of acting out. so all this "j/k. SERIOUSLY. j/k." stuff is just shit you need to get out of your system, not stuff you say irl (if it is stuff you say irl, maybe do it less? it is ok to be sincere, it's less confusing, it's very hard to follow the thought processes of someone who is double-guessing themself all the time). You're probably very engaging in person, that's always been the sense i have of you.

that's good advice c sharp major. another thing i would say is probably going off what dylannn said about living far away from people you know, which can have the effect of making you feel more lonely than you perhaps are. when i broke up with my gf in january i thought i had "no friends" too because i live in nj now after college and don't see people often. but then i reached out to people -- some of whom lived far away, some of whom not that far away -- and I realized there were tons of people from the past, college mostly, who were willing to talk to me, often for hours, about whatever. even if these conversations were on the internet they were still important just for dislodging the stupid bullshit in my head that said there was something wrong with me.

you seem like a lively guy, boy slayer, and i am sure there are at least some people who still consider themselves your friends. and just because you haven't reached out to people for a while doesn't mean that you can't reach out to them now. like, i am literally 100% sure that there is someone out there who thinks of you as their friend.

also, i like the sundays too. they're a band dylannn. jeeeeeeez.

come visit chicago. we'll hang.

that was directed at b_s but it applies to pretty much everyone in this thread too.

hey boy_slayer

I don't know if this is the case with you, but one of the symptoms of intense anxiety, as I've experienced it, is the inability for the brain to track one's own actions. I have entire days where I've been unable to keep track of what I am doing, what I've said. I'd frantically call a friend and blather on about my awful state of mind and then have no memory of the experience and call them back next week with an identical rant. It became repetitious! For my friends and family. They were sympathetic-- as is almost everybody here wrt you and your anxiety. What was recommended to me by my therapist, and it worked great, was to track my mental state with journal entries. (In my case, it's insomniac, ranting e-mails that never leave my Draft folder.) You record your inner monologue, when you're drunk and anxious, read it the next day, and gain some personal insight as to how your anxious brain works, I dunno if it'll help you out but it helped me out, if you'll allow me a prescriptive moment

that's a good idea. i used to do the ranting e-mail thing. also maybe stop drinking and try to sleep more, if that is an issue boy_slayer. taking care of my physical health has helped me emotionally way more than anything else. boring as it sounds, you can't think your way out of feeling bad you need to make concrete changes that will help you to feel better about yourself: take care of your health, make proactive steps to form social relationships, etc.

^

^ this is otm.

boy_slayer, I've been where you are. I had crippling depression that lead to alienation at both ages 18-19 and 26-27. At age 18, I left behind the best friends I'd ever known to go to college six hours away, and I wasn't ready. As a result, I didn't make new friends there (and there were many who wanted to be my friend), and lost those back home as, well, I wasn't there anymore, and I was driving them insane with my freakouts. Moved back home a year later and felt like a stranger in my own town. Recovered upon making new friends, but hit another low point at age 26 where I suffered from intense fear/paranoia and didn't trust the friends I did have, and became very isolated.

Anxiety, as flamboyant says, makes it very hard to think clearly, and thus, makes it difficult to accurately judge your actions, so you tend to do things that are potentially destructive (at varying magnitudes). The 'switch' that says "Maybe I shouldn't say/do this" doesn't flick until too late.

flamboyant gave some great advice. Mine is just basically to take things slowly. Throwing yourself into social situations out of a mere desire to be around people (since you mentioned you miss it) might seem like a good idea, but if you're not in the right mindstate, it can actually hamper you more; by seeing everybody else hanging out, being friendly, and having a good time, it can cause you to feel exclusion and can drive your inner anxiety further. It's not a *bad* idea to put yourself out in public, but only if you approach it with the right expectations.

Psychotherapy helped for me, as well. Learning how not to focus on the future, and its endless permutations and variable outcomes, and focus more on the immediate, is important. When I thought "gee, a year from now, so-and-so won't be my friend anymore, *girlfriend* will have broken up with me", and it got me worked up because of the uncertainty. and that anxiety leads us to seek reassurance, which over time, grates on those close to us. You have to find a way to get grounded, to be able to assess your thoughts and fears. I think the journal entry flamboyant suggested is a great idea, as one thing you'll notice is how often some of the same fears repeat, but also how flawed some of your processing can be when you're in an elevated anxious state.

It sounds like you've been on meds before and didn't have a great experience. I can feel that - when I was on Luvox, I became a zombie. If you can be patient and try other meds, you may find one that works for you. While my life isn't *perfect*, the Effexor I take has nulled the depressive feelings I used to have, and as such, have slowed my feelings of anxiety. That plus psychotherapy can help get you in a more 'stable' state. And you'll find that when you find that stability, it is actually much much easier to make new friends, probably easier than you ever thought.

When you are in a state like you are now, something as mundane as making a friend seems as difficult as writing a thesis; at my lowest, I was amazed that anybody wanted to be in the same room as me. It's all about getting grounded - you'll be surprised how quickly your social life can return once you've decreased your inner turmoil.

The other suggestion I'd give is - don't base your happiness on the number of friends you have. While it's certainly important to have friends, the quality of the friendship you have is way more important than the quantity. LIkewise, know that friends will get annoyed or frustrated with you now and then, because all friends do. Don't fear that every little disapproval will become bigger than just that - a minor issue. And likewise, know that sometimes friendships will end, for reasons that aren't your fault, and that you have to be able to not view that as a personal failing. (This is one area I still struggle with).

Hoping things begin to improve for you.

xxpost

hi boy_slayer. I can relate. I lost all my friends when I had a depressive breakdown in my early 20s and was too ill/ashamed to get in touch. I've been bad at meeting people since then and even worse at staying in touch because my dumb brain is lazy but also tells me I'm not as cool as the other person so it's up to them to contact me. And on the rare occasions they do I'm often noncommital for transport/anxiety reasons and they think I'm not interested in them and, the end. I seriously think I may have this but I probably shouldn't put that on a public board.

I recentlyish got dumped from a several year relationship and was bummed out to realise I don't have any real life friends close enough to go "oh I got dumped, pity me now" and none of his friends who knew me got in touch to ask if I was OK. So, you know, time for a new start I guess.

But! There is lots of good advice on this thread. Thank you everyone who posted, there is seriously a lot I'd like to come back to written here.

You kind of have to be ready to ask people on friend dates, to find something you could do together, else you'll never have a chance to become friends.

Here is a link on that subject which is probably super obvious to most people but made me go "yeah, I guess that is one approach. why couldn't I work that out for myself?", and then of course I made a billion excuses not to do it, again:
http://siderea.livejournal.com/396187.html (yeah, sorry for livejournal)

also I forgot to say good luck and best wishes!

see, that is another thing I need to learn to do more of, stop worrying about my own dumb self in conversation and just go "how about you?" or "hey your (weekend plans etc) sound awesome, (specific detail) is really cool, have a nice time!" so they have something to reply to and know I've been listening

(which to be honest sometimes I get so anxious in conversation I haven't been, but again, need to fix)

Where are you located?

good looking dude with no friends sounds like the perfect guy to hang out with, wish I could have a friend like that. you know, friendship is a bit overrated, you obv have at the v least 3-5 but you are too drunk / depressed / whatever and don't care enough to call / visit them. short attention span today so I stopped reading sorry... mesopotamia eh? I'm a huge fan of @AllMesopotamia. It will make you smile every time they post.

lol i really don't believe in Myers Briggs but i'm an INTP for what it's worth why is this such a thing?

see : D

https://twitter.com/AllMesopotamia/status/333348510751653888

wolves otm, people with too many friends are flighty and ime interactions with them are less than satisfying.

first step you should take is to do something about your alcoholism, tbqh.

xxp oh yeah I forgot to say that I don't believe in the Myers-Briggs stuff but the link seemed a useful checklist anyway

(when I first read it I thought "I'm not even INTP but this fits my needs anyway" but actually I misremembered and I think I am after all. so, ha, you got me Myers and/or Briggs even though I don't believe in you)

try reading this, i don't have anxiety or issues as extreme or painful as yours, but i've been in a very uncertain part of my life and this book articulates a way to think and perceive the world that i think is pretty dramatic and meaningful and has helped me become a lot more grounded and aware:

http://www.amazon.com/Peace-Is-Every-Step-Mindfulness/dp/0553351397

Here's an obvious point, but one that's easy to miss: have you tried going to social events based around some kind of activity, be it, whatever, a pottery class, walking group, etc?

hey boy. this may sound cruel, but i've noticed that you post almost exclusively to drunk threads, often in long, late-night bouts of alcoholic despair. i've often wanted to respond, but i recently quit drinking & haven't conversed w you otherwise, so i haven't known quite what to say.

my point is that the drinking doesn't seem to be doing you any good. i understand the need to self-medicate (believe me), but nothing repels more efficiently than depressive self-loathing, something alcohol often intensifies. it's a vicious cycle. depression is isolating by nature, and isolation intensifies depression.

this thread terrifies me and the personal information that i drunkenly divulged has made me a nervous wreck, the last few days.

i cannot let this go without thanking many of you for your kindness. some of you are saints. i kind of need this thread to sink back down off new answers. though most of what i said is true, i cannot allow this to still be me.

i just finished my homework. my father died 10 years ago today. it was important to me, for some reason. it was a hard day. thank you.

good vibes boy_slayer. if you're really concerned about some of the stuff you've said here you can always at least ask that "the personal information" is deleted or redacted or w/e

i did. i made two posts about it in my "threadbad" on mod request, toward the end. i think they went unnoticed. i would contact mods directly, but i have no idea who they are. room number doesn't matter, but i just need to be able to smoke in peace without worrying if people actually know who i am. thank you.

the post could've got lost in there. if you really want that stuff gone you might want to try again perhaps

boy_slayer, i don't think anyone actually tried to look up who you were based on that info. there are only 3,000ish registered users here and the vast majority of them never post so this is a more niche community than it might feel like. if you ever feel like you really need to vent about stuff again but you don't want to say stuff on a public board you can e-mail me. however, as i said before, i am at least ninety percent sure there are people in your life already -- friends -- who would be willing to listen to you if you reached out to them. in my experience, while life can get lonely, people usually are less lonely than they suspect at their darkest moments.

that's all i am going to say because i don't want to bump this thread again. i agree with you that a mod should take it down if you don't want it to be here.

slsk = mr. somewhere

probably can't share because i'm at school.

just, one thing, btw. i'm at this school because of CHARITY. i know that i'm not good enough to be here. people can be so kind, and although admissions are competitive... i'm here out of charity (though they wouldn't admit me unless they thought i could handle it, which i easily do). i'm sick of tarnishing the name of my school. it's sick and wrong, that i keep associating myself with my school. my school is better than this and me.

gotta go. i'm on slsk. thread must die.

please talk to me. done.

person i like, lurked here. i think they deleted their okc profile because of me.

this is me:

http://ak2.okccdn.com/php/load_okc_image.php/images/150x150/558x800/30x38/322x330/0/103931649554348326.jpeg

http://ak0.okccdn.com/php/load_okc_image.php/images/150x150/558x800/0x0/733x733/0/11995924653325377226.jpeg

god, i don't care about anything anymore. just let me do my thing, i like studying early civilization, and let me be.

yo boy_slayer what early civ stuff do u study?

basically, to sum it up, mesopotamia and sumeria.

can't talk to me. i got drunk again. this is why i requested permaban. i am self-destructive. i just wish that i had friends.

i have a nice watch, and shoes, and coat. and ties, and sweaters, and hair. i am deeply queer and repulsive. if someone would just, initially, overlook that - we could be friends and i could be normal. i basically deeply hate everything that comes into contact with me. it is scary. even if i hate myself, i don't hate others.

i try to be optimistic. i exercise a lot and that fourth track on the original Go Sailor compilation plays in my head a lot. I just wish i had friends. I don't know what i'm doing, again. thank you.

i am deeply, deeply queer inside - and wrong. people know. i walk into a room, and they know. i say hi to them, and they know. i wish that they didn't. i wish that things might change.

People know you are wrong? Look them in the vicinity of their eye and think the thought into their heads "Hell yes I am deeply wrong."

This won't get you anywhere, but it will help maintain the distance.

I acted like an ass all day at work. I felt like I was and, may literally have been, radiating a stench of anger and violence. I'm hating myself to a small degree.

I still did a good job. Maybe everything is okay.

i've dealt with depression all my life, my dad and his mother have as well. the feeling of being different is a lot to deal with, i've never quite felt i belonged in any social group i've been associated being with, being a foreigner and very effeminate.

meds really helped me, but i know that's not an option for a lot of people. regular exercise like cycling, swimming, etc. can have the same effect. the point about hobby groups is also a good look. scheduled meeting times kind of force you to interact with people, which i'm often not able to seek out otherwise.

but i know sometimes advice isn't what you're looking for when you're depressed anyway. i've never been able to help others with depression very well, it might be that it's too painful to see my own reflection, as it were. i'm reluctant to post this, but maybe it will help a little, who knows.

b_s i've added you on slsk — i'm Darjeeling