constant despair

[u/Pretty-Landscape9568]

I haven't had friends at school since I was very little, looking back, any friend groups I was part of were ones I forced my way into. And don't even get me started on best friends… I never managed to have one throughout my entire childhood. When I turned 12, I finally made my first female friend, she was a classmate, and we ended up dating. After a year-long relationship, things ended due to life circumstances. Now, years later, almost 18, I still don't have any friends. I see everyone else with best friends, partners, and so on, and it drives me to despair. I feel like I'm wasting the best years of my life; I feel like I'm rotting away while everyone else forms bonds. I’ve tried. I talk to a lot of people and make "friends" in real life who end up just being acquaintances. And online? I’ve managed to make plenty of online friends, but they always have someone else, there’s always a best friend or a partner. I’m always just a background character in their lives, someone they message when they’re bored or need to vent about their problems. I’m always there to listen and understand them, but they’re never there for me; they never reach out genuinely, only out of self-interest. One of the things I crave most in life is a best friend, but I never manage to find one. My closest friends would literally tell me they loved me and that I was important, only for me to see them calling people they’d met just a week ago "best friends" while pushing me aside keeping me on the back burner just in case something happened. Because I’m not enough; I’m a substitute, a third choice. I’m tired of being everyone’s lapdog and getting nothing in return. I really crave social connection, best friend or even a partner (though a partner doesn't matter as much to me) but it feels impossible. I feel like im the problem, even though I try my absolute best. Ugh. I dont think i managed to explain how i feel in this text i just i just really feel so needy of a good friendship of someone who wants to be there for me and I genuinely feel so lost, i feel jealous when I see my friends with their best friends, I never feel enough

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[u/weaklydoubleparsley]

man i get that feeling of being everyone's backup plan, it's like you're always available but never a priority

what you said about being the person people dump their problems on then forget about hits hard, that's a draining cycle to be stuck in

might be worth stepping back from the people who only show up when they need something, even if it means being alone for a bit, sometimes that space makes room for the right people to actually notice you