Hi, this is my first time reaching out on this site. (Excuse my possible grammar mistakes since English is not my first language.) I am an 18-year-old girl who’s struggled with friendships all her life. My “best friend” throughout elementary school was very abusive and demeaning towards me. She completely shattered my self-esteem and confidence. I had another friend too and she was all the same. I couldn’t recognise emotional abuse at the time due to the emotional (and physical) neglect I suffered at the hands of my caregivers. After I left the relationship at 13, I got targeted by a bully which made it even harder to create new friendships. I managed to make one friend after all and being with her ended up being the happiest time of my life so far. Anyways, her and me tried to join a new group of girls and I saw this group as my only chance to finally get into a “healthy” friend group that I’d always been dreaming of. As I said earlier, my parents have always been neglectful and left me home alone for hours since I was 8. This resulted in an intense need for connection and caretaking, which came across as clinginess and “fakeness” that eventually pushed the friend group away, including my original best friend.

After that I continued to high school where I’m studying now. It’s in the same building with my old school where the bullying occurred so it feels pretty horrible going there every day. After one year of hanging around with some people that I felt like I didn’t really click with I finally got the courage to start getting to know the group of friends that I knew would be like me and would make great friends after observing their interactions during the first year. Needless to say, I placed HUGE expectations on this group, thinking that my loneliness would finally fade. But, I hate to say this, I made the same mistakes as with the first group, (although not as seriously): I tried too hard, placed all my happiness on these people and came across as clingy and annoying which resulted in them slowly starting to avoid and ignore me. I even overheard one of them saying to the other after they thought I had already gone to the cafeteria: “Let’s not go eat with her!” I had had my suspicions but this was such a devastating hit, especially after I had (too quickly) revealed them some very private details of my life. Also, one of them was a bit sensitive as a person and I accidentally ended up saying things that hurt her out of my own insecurity. She pointed these things out, I apologised sincerily, but after that our relationship was never the same it had been before. Because of all this, I feel so ashamed of myself and my repeated mistakes that I have stopped eating with them at school. I just can’t bear the things I’ve done and what they might think of me now. I am extremely unhappy now and have started to eat with the old best friend and her friends. Some of them make me feel a little uncomfortable and I just feel like an outsider there too. I have some people that I might consider making friends with, but at this point I feel quite hopeless about it all and I’m afraid these people will turn out to be like my abuser because of the sarcastic humor they use. I just really don’t know what to do anymore and how to keep going. I know I only have one year of school left but I just can’t stand the thought of having to be friendless any more. I wish for understanding and support even though my problems might seem pretty small. I feel really hopeless and worthless, I just feel like I can’t go on anymore.