Just clearing some thoughts from my mind:

I have had therapy for being sexually abused, but for the past 3 years I've also been getting help for my high functioning autism. After the therapist started to break trust with some of my family by revealing to me some of the issues all of them were struggling with, I stopped going to therapy completely.
I am a Savant, which means i am really intelligent in something like technology and music production, but i lack social skills that everyone else seems to understand easily.

Because of my past experiences of getting too attached to guys that aren't attracted to me or any guys in the first place (most of them being straight),
There have been times where I'd walk away from meeting someone new, or just talking with someone in general, with the overwhelming feeling I'd done something wrong and had no idea what it was. If someone did get mad at me, I obsess over it, stuck in a cycle of shame and self-hatred long after the other person had let it go.

I try to be social with people i know are more mature and that i can get along with, but that's maybe only 4 or 5 people, majority are teachers. After i graduate high school in june, i'll have to start all over again in college and my job. What scares me the most is not knowing who to trust, or knowing if i am understanding other people's boundaries, or if i become too personal about myself.

If anyone has anything they want to discuss to help me out, i would appreciate it. If anyone needs anything explained, i'll reply as soon as i can.

You sound very mature. I thought you were already in college based on your tone.

This is just a gay thing.

Anyway, I suggest listening to Halsey's album BADLANDS. It got me through a lot of stuff during my dark days.

Thanks for the music suggestion.

listen to born this way it'll help you find inner peace; xo

An unusual thing about me is like Marina and The Diamonds, i have synesthesia. When i hear music, i can connect it to a person's personality, and the emotions i notice in other people and in music is represented by a color depending on the emotion. Anyways, thanks for the suggestion.

First of all, you sound like a incredible intelligent and very strong person that has been through alot and then some tbh.

Really, I'm kinda the same way. Whenever someone gets mad, i automatically think it's about me and i get so sad until im sure it's not anything i did.

Really, it's all a day by day thing. Your never automatically going ti start being open with everyone and social, it takes times. My suggestion for you is to start off slow and steady at your own pace. Don't rush into making friends or wanting to be open because you'll end up retreating and going back to how you used to be cause you probably weren't ready.

Try to find a few people you can make small talk with and talk about random school stuff with and see how that goes. If that goes great and they statt wanting to hang out, then ever better. I hope im saying the right things and not off topic

You never know who is trust worthy tbh. It's one of the many risks of life. To know who to trust, you have to find those peolle that truly value you and the relationship you have with them. Because once you do, their gonan give you their trust and it'll be good. So basically, take slow steps.

Boundaries is always a topic to bring up as well. Never be afraid to tell someone how you are because if they truly are there for you, they'll understand and work with you on it if you want them tol. You've been through alot so its okay to feel the way your feeling & it's never your fault, just take slow & steady steps and you'll end up succeeding.

Thanks for the reply. I'll be sure to save this and the music suggestions. If anyone has anything else to add, that would be great.

Ok this is going to be really awful advice but here it is: looks matter.

If your hair is a mess, if your teeth are dirty, if your clothes aren't cute - that turns people off more than any attitude/personality, at least at first.

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Anyway I'm ugly, and was EXTREMELY ugly during my high school years, but I suspect had I bothered to work on my fitness and fashion, I might have seemed somewhat less of a loser.

Anyway, as for liking guys who don't like you back, that is literally just the cruel part of being gay - you're always attracted the most to the strongest, most masculine, testosterone-full men, and God's cruel joke was to make so many gay men spend their whole lives associating more closely with the personality of women, therefore making them somewhat more feminine. And it's just like ugh god why.

Now that I think of it I'm surprised SJWs haven't come for gay men as being "misogynists" cause they're not into women.

Anyway what I am talking about?

This thread has made me tear up because I relate to almost everything in it oh so well... I think it's extremely important for you to acknowledge the fact that you try to be social and be very proud of yourself for that. Isolation is such an easy thing to give in to. I will tell you one thing from my personal experience is that after graduating high school things very extremely downhill for me. I later found out that studies show that post-graduation is the most common time in a person's life in which things such as mental illness and PTSD come more to the surface in their life. It's also much easier to become isolated after graduating. I went to college the fall following high school graduation, though I had to drop out due to some very personal and mental issues which had been pushed aside and buried quite deep from a very, very young age... Today, going on four years this spring since graduating high school, so much has changed. For about six months now I finally for the first time began to try harder to socialize and I was doing so well. I had reconnected with old friends as well as met a few new people. I had been going out every weekend and many week days. I even began my first relationship of my life. It turned out I was not ready for a relationship and will likely not be for many, many more years. Unfortunately that situation had made a turn for the worse, when I ended the relationship this past December, and a week later, the guy committed suicide... Since then I have become very isolated again and stopped seeing or even contacting most of my friends. All you can do is try. If you try your best, that is all that matters. Your best might be accomplishing something in a years time that may be something that somebody else could do in a month, or a week even. And that is totally 100% okay!

I'm apologize for how I kind of began telling my own story here rather than giving you advice. But I'd like for you to know that you may message me at ANY time on ATRL and if you'd like, we may talk off of ATRL. I would like to help you in any way that I possibly can, even if it's just by talking and/or being there for you to talk to. I hope that you have a wonderful night.

You brought up a good point. Looks do matter. If anyone's interested heres a pic: https://www.instagram.com/p/3LsashTY...-by=jscott5811

this is a completely normal feeling.

People don't care or notice or judge others as much as you'd think. They're too busy focusing on themselves so unless you like, tear off your tshirt in the middle of conversations or dont shower or mumble about the Columbine shootings under your breath in front of others, you shouldn't have that much to worry about the way you're presenting yourself to the world.

Just listen to what other people have to say to get closer to them. Sympathize with their bitching, add some jokes. Ask questions about themselves and let them open up. People love talking about themselves.

I am glad someone found this thread useful. Thank you for sharing your story. In my experience, most people on the autism spectrum have an increased rate for suicide. During my 8th grade year when I first found a guy I felt feelings for, he called me and asked me if I loved him. I told him that I did and he said he felt the same way. I later found out that was a setup to see if I was gay. The people I thought were my friends since 4th grade left me, and I became depressed, suicidal. I was able to talk myself out of it, but the next year I sent a picture of myself to him and he ended up reporting me to be expelled but yet he was doing the same thing, on top of that his parents were cops. I knew I needed more help than what they could offer so I changed schools, and for the past 3 years it has slowly gotten better.
I use to have teachers that were meant to help with my learning disability tell me that I was lazy and I would never be able to accomplish anything in life because I struggled with math. The good news is that other teachers were able to encourage me to ignore that one person.

Anyways, thanks for the post.

That is what I've been doing for the past 3 years. Listening more than speaking, and letting people know that I care about what they need to say. Yet they say I listen too often, and don't speak as much as I should. Most of that has to do with anxiety, and worrying about going off the wrong topic or taking something too far. If someone says they like listening to Kesha, I could talk about what I know personally about her and forget about the music. I know that most people don't care about the experience I had with Dr. Luke, or what I know about keshas case against him. Remembering my limits isn't easy, but I'll try to keep in mind what you said in this post.

If anyone has any experiences they want to share, that can be helpful too. Thanks to everyone who's posted on this thread so far.

You're very mature and I totally respect it!

Jesse, I think you shouldn't be scared of starting over! We'll have countless experiences in our lives and maybe starting over will be a good restart for you! And I think you shouldn't push yourself too hard if you don't feel like being social at a certain moment. Just don't isolate yourself from the world, but when you don't feel like being social, just don't be. We are all different in our own way and I think you should just be yourself. It happens that we need to be social right? ahahaha and sometimes that sucks.

But don't be scared! Give a chance to people and it can be an open way for you to find new and cool friendships. I have no idea of what you went through, nobody will ever know, but my advice is for you is to enjoy the most you can, and give chances to everyone! You might discover lots of cool things about yourself when you start doing things.

Edit: Try to seem insterested even if a talk goes the kardashian/jenner route. You'll hear things you don't wanna know about certain things and that's because this is interesting to that person. Do it too, share your world, share what you like and what you know.

ox

Funny thing about mentioning "Jenner", a study came out recently showing a connection between autism and being transgender. I guess because both don't always follow society's standards.

Anyways, Thanks for the advice.

I've had a similiar experience to yours when I started high school. It was simply too much for me, all the new people and different sourandings. I'm bisexual and at that time wasn't even sure was gay or straight it was so confusing. I stopped speaking, was completely shut down. And meeting a new person was the worst nightmare. I would always care too much of their 1st impression of me and that would result in my saying something awkward or something that I thought was awkward and then I would think about that for the rest of the day and basically fall into depression. It didn't help when 2 certain guys who were my friends for the most of my life started teasing me for being so damn quite all the time. The thing is, on the outside I seemed like a regular guy who was simply too shy, but in the inside I suffered a lot and sometimes for no reason cuz I would think about some irrelevant stuff too much. Like, when someone was laughing in the background I was wondering if they were laughing at me, and you know, stuff like that. And some people enjoyed making fun of me for being so socially awkward and I pretended I didn't care and I laughed with them. Sometimes I wonder if I told them to stop, would things be different at that time. Also I sucked at every single sport I tried and of course they were teasing me about that too.

It got better in my final year of high school, but I still couldn't wait for it to finish. I signed up for the college I wanted and that was great. I decided to try my best not to be awkward, to talk more with people but the thing that helped me the most was the change of my appearance. I know, it sounds silly. I gained about 20 kg (~40 pounds), stopped wearing glasses (now I'm wearing contact lenses) and changed my lifestyle that included spending too much time on the computer and unhealthy food. That really helped me become much happier. When I see myself in the mirror, I don't see that skinny guy with glasses who used to be bullied in school, I see an adult who is ready to make something out of his life.

I also met 2 amazing people who are my best friends right now. We share the same interests in movies, TV shows. Both of them don't watch any sports, so that helps too

Of course my life isn't perfect, but it really does get better if you put some effort. I'm still awkward but much less compared to my high school days.

Thanks for the reply. I struggle with being underweight at about 105 lbs.
It was great reading your experience.

Going back and reading everyone's advice has made me feel better after falling back into depression recently.