Well, if you’ve been excluded your entire life, like I have, if your invitations are rejected, if you’re never the one being invited, if you search for people who never search for you, and if every connection you manage to form is shortlived and ends in ghosting, it starts to make you doubt your own humanity a little. I think my experience, like the OP, allows me to entertain the idea that there’s something fundamentally wrong with me, as if I’m somehow not fully human.

I can understand being in the wrong contest once or twice in your life, but I’ve lived in five different cities. I’ve gone to college three times. I play multiple instruments and have played in bands and orchestras. And yet here I am: completely alone. I have no one to text for a little chat, no one to grab a beer with me on a Saturday night, no one to plan a coffee with, no one to reassure me when I’m struggling. I’m moving through life entirely on my own, rawdogging it, doing everything alone.

At this point, I’ve given up on relationships, on friendship, on love. The few people I’ve ever called friends eventually disappeared. It feels less painful to stop hoping altogether than to keep sinking my already low hope that it is actually all a misunderstanding and that someday I’ll finally find a circle of people who choose me back.