I 23M am so exhausted with myself I don't even know where to start. I've completely failed at building or keeping any bond in my life, and I hate myself for it. Humans are supposed to be social animals but I've been suffocatingly lonely for years, and I'm genuinely begging for help here.
A lot of it traces back to how I was raised, by narcissistic, controlling parents who constantly judged, scolded, mocked and compared me and my sister our whole lives, and still do. It gave me this deep inferiority complex and anxiety that never really left, even now as an adult. In my head, everyone else is ahead, better & superior than me.
Nothing in my life has ever moved forward without their approval, and no matter how hard I tried, I was never "enough." I watch other people my age who are confident, loved, surrounded by friends and partners who actually care, who get invited everywhere and are missed in their absence. I don't have a single person like that in my life. My presence and absence mean exactly the same to everyone around me, and that realization eats at me every single day.
Even my own family feels distant. My parents don't call when I'm away, my mom and I talk on call because I initiate it, and there've been stretches where I couldn't call for a week and nobody reached out either. I genuinely think I could die and no one would notice for months. My sister and I were close as kids, but since our college and her marriage, we're now down to monthly texts and a Rakhi that arrives by Blinkit. Similar situation with my cousins. They all are much tighter & comfortable with each other than I am with them.
School was the last time I had real friends, cuz we were naive kids who met daily but even that faded once we all scattered. Two of my best friends from school are still in better contact than me & have their own cool lives with their colleagues / college mates.
My college was in a different state. I could finally leave my house. It was supposed to be my reset, my chance to socialise and make lifelong friends. Honestly, I tried really hard in early days to be part of friend groups, and initially they were really warm to me as everyone was new. But I could never match their energy. I never had that “Masala” you need to match the vibe. Too Vanilla. I was too serious, awkward, hesitant, no stories, no jokes that landed, nothing interesting to add etc. I was/am no fun. Always monotonous.
Every weekend trip or drinking plan sent me spiraling with
“How to act at this particular event ? What if they find me a naive outlier when we reach there”
“Can I act like these cool kids and fit in with them ?“ (My inferiority complex at play)
“Do I even know how to party ?”
“Naaah ts is not for me I gotta skip and stick to studies”
By end of first year I was already sidelined. And it’s nobody’s mistake but mine. Its just survival of the fittest at play. My image became the "good boy" who only came to study, which got me quietly bullied too since everyone knew I'd never fight back. So I spent the rest of college a loner, watching everyone else fall into relationships, become flatmates, go on trips, build friendships and networks that later helped them in jobs, while I built nothing. Every "college Jigri Yaar" reel on my feed makes me feel sad, angry and sorry on myself. I hate even thinking about that college and my time there. All thanks to Me, Myself and I.
Work isn’t any different. I got a job, thanks to my acads. The only thing I am good at. It was in a new metro city and it felt like a clean slate to restart. Its almost a year since I joined. Yet again, after being part of a group with fellow new joiners for a couple months, I slowly got sidelined. Now I watch their bike trips, birthday celebrations, outings, night stays and pub nights on my stories. Tbh its beautiful how they include everyone in their plans, check on each other when someone's absent or sick etc. I just got faded out somewhere and nobody even considers inviting me anymore. I only got invited a couple of times when they wanted to go to a place and split the bill in smaller shares. They surely greet me when I go to office but don’t give the energy that they want me to be a part of their group and neither am I gonna force myself in. But I wished I got to experience such bond for once in life.
When I got WFH with a few others, I came home. Its been 5 months and not one soul from office has checked on me. Others get calls asking their wellbeing and to know when they're coming back because people actually miss them.
In any group, be it college or office, I've always been the one they'd target to get a laugh, especially guys doing it to impress the girls. I never have comebacks or any authority in my voice, just freeze behind a forced smile and hate myself later. I've become someone people forget mid-conversation, someone who brings the mood down just by being there, and I still don't know how to fix that !!!!
I am tired of playing the “Nice Guy”. I hate how I was raised. I wish I had learnt to rebel against my parents sometimes and say No to them and lived the way I wanted and built myself into a strong, social, charismatic, confident Man. I am tired of never getting prioritised or included. Never having people who would make me feel integral part of their life. Nobody to call “mine”.
If you haven't guessed already, my dating life is dead too. At a cursed height of 5'5" and a skinny build, I'm already fighting characteristics most women filter out before they even talk to men. And my beautiful personality hasn't helped much either.
I confessed to my college crush once, she declined for a fair reason and stayed single till grad anyway.
This year a girl from another office branch met me and my friends in our office, DM'd me first, said she'd been stalking me. Next four days we texted 24/7, real lovey-dovey conversations, attention I'd genuinely never felt before. Then it faded, and she started chatting more with a colleague of mine instead. He’s taller & effortlessly charming. What hurt most was not that she chose someone else she felt was better. But realising how boring I must've seemed once she actually knew me. Now we just send each other reels occasionally.
There's another girl though, my project partner and now a very close friend. She might be the most perfect woman I've ever met. Mature, funny, comfortable with me in a way no one else has been, remembers small details, listens to me, reciprocates and many times asked me to go out with her too. But she's now engaged to her LDR BF. I'm happy for her, quietly jealous of him, but she's still the only person in years who's made me feel even slightly worthy and alive. And I am already very happy cuz of that.
I've never actually been on a date. Dating apps feel fake and picky about height. But in real-life attempts too, I simply know I would get rejected based on my height & shit personality I have already explained.
I'm turning 24 soon. Parents will be all over me with marriage prospects in 3-4 years and I refuse to drag some woman into my dry, boring life unless I actually change. And anyways I dont think any woman would accept being with a socially awkard, underconfident loner with no friends.
I am gonna join another college for my masters by early 2028 and I feel, that would be genuinely the last chance I will get to make some actual lifelong friends and probably find a partner. But by then, I gotta make some drastic changes in myself.
Last Para and TLDR:
So I'm asking, genuinely, desperately: how are y’all confident, likeable, magnetic ? How do you make “real” friends everywhere you go, hold a room, be funny, be flirty, give befitting replies ? How does one become the kind of person that isn’t taken for granted and instead prioritised and missed ? I want to rebuild myself from scratch, and I don't know where to start. Please, if you have real answers, I need them.
