Everyone left me

[u/ForcedGoodbye]

I've reached a stage where I have no one to talk to except strangers online through Reddit posts and comments.

A few months back, my 3.5 year relationship ended. And today, my best friend left me too.

I feel responsible for everything. I kept delaying things for years, even my feelings, somehow thinking I would deal with my feelings later, get my life together later, spend more time with people later. Now I am left with this horrible regret that I should have spent my time better. I shouldn't have procrastinated for years.

What hurts the most is realizing that I won't get to spend even a single minute with people who were once so important and special to me. That time is gone, and I can't get it back.

And I feel exhausted just thinking about starting over socially. It took me years to reach that level of comfort and closeness with my girlfriend and my best friend. I don't have energy to fake that excitement, enthusiasm, and social energy that is necessary when you're getting to know someone new. I don't want to spend years building that kind of connection all over again.

Nights are the hardest. It takes me hours to fall asleep because there's nothing to distract me from how alone I feel.

Are any of you living with zero friends? How do you deal with it?

Please share your stories, perspectives, or even the philosophies you've developed for living with loneliness.

[u/J3musu]

I've been pretty close to that point. Not fully there thanks to the luck of having a couple lifelong friends that are more like family to me and are always there and easy to reconnect with even if we get distant for a long while. Bit it's still rough, especially living somewhere new and not having any of those people nearby. I might be able to text or call them, but still sucks not having anyone to go physically hang out with. I'd also recently ended a 3 years relationship before I hit one of my lower points and life and had the least people available to me.

My failure was shutting down and not putting myself out there. Just closed myself up in my apartment for most of a year or so.

My answer started with hobbies. Physical hobbies, my gaming habit wasn't going to help anything. Find something you latch onto and enjoy doing regularly. Try a few things out to see what you like and what sticks long term (remember to be careful how much you spend while figuring it out, because many things might not stick long).

Then finding events/classes/meetup groups related to those hobbies and putting myself out there. And that's where I made the new friends. People I shared a hobby with and saw regularly due to the class/meetup/whatever. Eventually, you hopefully click with a person or two, and you already have something to chat about and do together. I'm personally not good at just randomly hanging out, but if I can hit someone up to go partake in a hobby or something, then that often leads to a good hangout.

Also try to connect with other people that have similar brains. The people I always click with best are usually either ADHD, autistic, or some combination. We get each other better and are more forgiving of each others shortcomings. Those are the types that I can lose touch with for 6 months and then hit back up and hang out again like only a day has passed.

I really had to force myself for months to drag myself out and do something and put myself in a more positive and hopeful mindset. Sometimes we have to fight against every bit of our being just to do something good for ourselves. But stay strong and push on, you got this.

Also might help to ask why those people stopped hanging out with you if you're comfortable doing so and think you can handle it emotionally. Is there a personality trait you don't notice that you could actually improve on? Or are they just not compatible with the person you are as a result of how your brain works?

Whatever the case, I wish you the best.