I made a similar post a few weeks ago, but just remembered that the last time I had friends was over ten years ago, when I was ten.
My whole life at the moment is going to work during the week and being too exhausted for anything for the rest of the day and having no motivation to do anything on the weekends.
The only people around me are my family and my colleagues. Nobody asks how I am or is otherwise interested about me.
I don’t know why I should continue to live, I don’t see many reasons for it
I would be overjoyed to be your friend, or even just talk and hang out. PLEASE reach out. So many of my friends are in similar situations. We could play minecraft and stay up until the wee hours of the morning laughing about dumb stuff.
Hey Kiara, similar sentiment as u/[email protected] here.
I can definitely relate to the “no friends outside of family+work” situation. Having moved relatively often I didn’t build any “friend groups” and staying in touch with the very few ones that lasted is difficult, mainly because I’m quite an introvert too (in the sense of: social contact == draining batteries / alone time == recharging). So while that makes me content most of the time, there’s moments when I miss just having a random chat with somebody outside of my daily life. However putting myself “out there” seems difficult/draining and not worth the hassle (traveling to the nearby “big city”, for example).
What are things you like to do? Is there something you’d like to learn or try out but didn’t have the means to yet, or something you enjoyed in the past, but stopped for some reason?
Coworkers tell me I’m a good mentor or at least rubber ducky, so if you feel like venting or sorting out some day-to-day stuff, my inbox and matrix handle are open as well. Maybe trying out some 1:1 connections with the people here is a small enough step to actually dare try out?
Idk anything about your life right now, so if you’ve heard the following a thousand times already, I’m sorry.
I’ve been in a similar situation roughly 2 years ago, although I’ve had a good amount of old friendships, but also too tired to meet any of them. Work and household was just too much.
So I stopped working with the explicit goal to deal with my fucked mental health. (If you can’t do that cause your country doesn’t help people who need help I’m doubly sorry) It wasn’t easy, but it did get better, a lot better. Just took forever(3yrs).
It really helped to find groups with similar problems and/or interests. Can be a huge step obviously but ever since then I am struggling to decide who to spend time with. And queer safe spaces tend to attract really friendly people.
At any rate, I needed a lot of help, coming from a lot of sources. It feels like you are in a similar situation, so you probably need lots of help too. Reach out and ask for it nobody can help you if they don’t know you need and want it.
Good luck on your journey, please continue, it’ll be worth it.
Thank you
I was the same way when I lived in my hometown. Is it possible that you just need to be somewhere new and exciting? When i moved to Edinburgh i suddenly gained a massive social circle of neuro divergent and queer friends to go to clubs and raves with. My life was a complete mess during that time, but I was never alone. You don’t even need much money to do it if you line up a job and find a chill collective to live in. It doesn’t even need to be somewhere like LA or London, Edinburgh is a city of 500 000 and plenty big enough. Just somewhere with a lot of diversity and students.
Yes, living in a tiny village is probably part of the problem, but I’m scared that I will be even more lonely when I move somewhere else. Here is the previous post I mentioned, where I explained a bit more about my situation: https://piefed.blahaj.zone/post/357646
I know a bit about rural life. I grew up in a community of around 160 people a very high percentage of whom were above retirement age.the hour bus ride to the nearest proper town was only possible between 08:00 and 18:00. So I saw people at school but was largely isolated unless I spent the night.
I was mostly ignored by everyone and extremely lonely and when I went to Edinburgh, I just made up my mind that I was going to talk to everyone and make an effort to socialise as much as possible. It worked, and I got involved with everything. I had 4 different friend circles and did something every evening. But I wasn’t getting anything else done. I was avoiding being alone because if I was alone I would be trapped with the thoughts of being vastly different from my peers and woefully misunderstood. I felt even more alone in those times.
But you have the advantage of knowing you’re trans. I didn’t. What eventually helped more than anything is meeting my current partner and eventually opening up to her. But I never would have met her if I’d stayed in my rural pit. Living rurally isn’t bad per se, but it requires that you are sociable and not picky about who you socialise with. Either that or you have to be extremely comfortable with your own company.
I recommend contacting someone you know irl who has moved to the closest reasonable sized city and asking if they can show you round/help set you up with a job. People at work will ask if you want to go to the bar after work. You need to say yes whether or not you think they are people you want to hang out with.
You also need to find the low effort mentally ill crowd. To do this, go to any cheap looking pub that has a board game night and go talk to the autistic looking people dressed in black. They are likely to know other trans women and that’ll get you into the community.
Also, I’m not sure how it is there, but my town has a pride week that includes things like a trans café, trans swimming hours at the local pool, and a pre-march breakfast sponsored by the national trans patient association. These could be a good way to make yourself known to your people. I intend to go to a couple of those events next week (pride week is in November where I live so students from out of town can participate).
You can usually meet some easygoing people if you turn up to weird stuff happening there. Like with Edinburgh as an example: the Beltane fire festival. The crustys taking part in that took me out to the forest where we built a sweat lodge, played team building games, drank chilli whiskey and mushroom tea, and danced bollock naked round the campfire until the dog walkers started asking why we were all dancing around naked at 10 in the morning? and could they join us?
Basically the people who are outside of normal society will largely look after each other and they tend to accumulate in larger cities.
I’ve been staring at your post for about an hour. I don’t know what to say but I don’t want to leave without saying anything…
Hi kiara, nice to meet you. 🧡
Hi, thank you, nice to meet you too
My teens and 20s were similar. I did have one friend off and on in middle and high school, but more because I tolerated him more than others did than because he cared about me. Things improved later in life once I found an extrovert who was good at gathering people and put a lot of effort into being one of the people who shows up to a lot of her events even when my energy is low. I’m AuDHD, and have a very taxing job so it takes a lot, but it’s been well worth it. It also helped that I switched from looking for a partner(s) to looking for friends which might later become partners. Having a partner who isn’t a friend but being obligated to spend a majority of time with them was a big problem.
(I eventually transitioned to ethical non monogamy, but that’s another subject, but for me it meant finding friends and partners was the same thing essentially. Especially when I abandoned the conditioning of relationship escalators, stopped being envious of partners, and stopped needing to hate partners after breaking up.)
I still have almost no energy for friends during the week, but make sure to plan well in advance and reserve energy or take time off if needed to attend regular events. This still isn’t enough social interaction for me, but the stress of the transition stuff and a major promotion at work with tons more responsibility this year has made it all I could handle. Especially after some major relationship drama tied to starting my transition last year.
Anyway, long story…well…it’s hard transitioning from school life where you’re forced together with people, to work life where positive, lasting bonds are much less likely to happen, but it still takes most of your social energy. So, getting adopted by people who thrive on social gatherings and are good at bringing people together is the way to go, but you have to be reliable to keep getting invited to things. And you aren’t likely to create a tight bond with the organizer, that type often isn’t good at deep lasting, bonds but the people they gather around them often are seeking those types of bonds.
The advice about sticking to an extroverted person is probably what saved me from sliding into Kiaras situation too badly.
Helped lots with networking and learning social skills. It also helped a lot that they were a really patient and accepting person, so me being me didn’t “scare” them off.
I don’t want to arm chair diagnose anyone from a handful of words but… this sounds like depression. Being exhausted from work should happen once in a blu moon, not every day (tired is normal). Lacking motivation to do the stuff you want to do every weekend also seems like a deeper problem.
This aside: thanks for being here! It might seem others don’t care, but we do. I have a friend going through stuff. I know they are having it rough, I try to help knowing it barely does. I just hope they’ll cone out on top at some point.
I wish the same for you. If you have accessible mental health resources, please reach out to them, get a plan in place. Even if it seems useless or overwhelming. Please
Thank you
Diagnosed depressed bipolar, and this is exactly how I felt in the depths of it.
Hey friend, I don’t know you, but I will say the world is brighter with you in it.
Thank you
So, how are you doing now? I’m hoping a bit better at least :)
I’m a bit better, but still lonely
Glad to hear you’re feeling a bit better. The loneliness will take time to rectify. I do wish you all the best
If you end it all, you’re certain no good tubes will come m but if you hang around longer things will eventually change. It always does. And you seem like a good peeps and I think you’ll have a good future^^
Friend. I’ve 100% been there. Look. Suicide is a null sum. It’s the end with zero possibility. You had the COURAGE to reach out with this post. That means you still possess STRENGTH! You are worthy of love. You are worthy of friendship. Let’s be friends! What are your interests? I play music, I make robots, I share cute pika pictures and dumb shots of my dog, and I love vidya games and science. I want universal basic income and the workers to take back the means of production. I want a global populace working towards the benefit of all people without borders.
I want to be your friend, tell me something you love.
Thank you. I liked playing video games too, but I’m not interested in them anymore. I want to learn more about electronics, but have no motivation to do it
Yeah, after you’re out of school it becomes really difficult to make friends (especially as someone who’s different), but it does happen eventually be it due to changing jobs and what not. Until then, you kinda have to rely on online friends for socializing so you don’t go Insane.
Also, dunno what you’re like IRL but it’s possible the issue could stem from you, it’s something you have to look into how you act yourself and see how you come off. Maybe you’re acting in a way that’s too unapproachable, and is there any way you can change that?
If theres any tips I could give you, it’d be practice small talk with coworkers if you get the chance to maintain social skills, change jobs once you’re able every once in a while to also change the people.
You’re still like 20, you still have 8+ years of your youth remaining so there’s time.
I know the issue stems from me, here is the previous post I mentioned: https://piefed.blahaj.zone/post/357646
I don’t want to change jobs, where I am currently I’m accepted by everyoneIn that case, the best play is probably to practice speaking to others at work, even if it’s cringe or small amounts. How would one even go about making friends by constantly being mute? There’s no cheat code for speech, and it’s especially important for (ex-)shut-ins, as social skills such as speech are kind of a muscle that can atrophy, which is where many problems come from.
Btw speaking of exhaustion issues, are you eating enough? I had a similar issue myself where I’d be exhausted after shift, with hardly enough time to recover my muscles and energy and it got fixed after I stopped skipping lunch and just ate more nutritious meals. If that’s the case for you, maybe this could give you enough energy to get stuff done after work and on weekends such as finding groups of people in communities that interest you? It’s also a very much viable alternative if you can’t find anyone at your job.
Thank you. I am eating enough, I was very underweight before I started hormones and I am now only slightly underweight
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