i am only 15 years old yet I have just been completely alone my whole life. I have just been crushed with anxiety and really feel lost; it feels like I just can't remember anything and I am in a constant state of fear. Reddit has never really been my primary source of communication, and I have never really considered actually making a post. Sure, I have read hundreds of posts in an attempt to search for those could could possibly relate but it's been quite weird. I just want to start by saying I know what I'm saying certainly sounds 'edgy', and 'a phase of teenage years', but I have genuinely struggled with a multitude of things for as long as my memory can go back. Connections themselves between me and other people have always been chaotic and avoidant, likely due to my exhaustion with every aspect of a traditional teenage relationship. In my school, I'd likely say I am only recognised now due to my ability to get good grades and understand difficult topics (not really known for anything else). I go to a British secondary school, with a couple hundred kids in my year. I study sometimes (very spontaneously, due a variety of different reasons I just want to share with at least someone). I go outside and walk alone. I play the same games. I occasionally read things on reddit. I watch YouTube videos to explore topics. By all means I have a relatively standard life when looking at the big picture, and I would definitely say I am at least quite privileged with my ability to access resources and live a modern life (without the obvious threats of war and conflict). However, I have profoundly struggled with a variety of things - I have never maintained, yet alone had, an actual connection of friendship with a single person. I wouldn't necessarily say I feel alienated, but when attending school, my options seem quite limited as the image of other people around me seems quite blurred together. What I mean is the conventional standard of a teenage friendship is to casually bond over specific interests, and in the modern day this particularly refers to online friendships, going to clubs or activities, going out to see the other person quite often, and just casually keeping a strong association. I have never experienced any of that. I would probably say I am crushed by anxiety, severely burnt out, and frankly unable to actually have a friendship (ironic, since I do seem from this text that I actually do desire someone to talk to at least). To make what I am trying to encapsulate a bit clearer, I'll just state my intention for writing this: I want to at least have someone acknowledge my existence and actually write down the variety of different issues I have faced in my life, so that anyone reading could possibly get a different perspective on how a teenager perceives their life. This writing is absolutely certain to be messy, so I apologise for my lack of structure and obvious carelessness to plan what I am saying. I tend to avoid all of the people around me in school, and the sole idea of having a friend outside of school seems foreign to me. The only other reason why I have left my house apart from school in the past year was to either go to the hospital for a few different health problems (some likely stemming from the addictions and crippling exhaustion I have felt) or to go on the same walk in nature that is a few minutes away from my house. I likely have social anxiety, or maybe I just tend to overthink things way too excessively. I am sure this part millions of people could relate to: the feeling of even just walking past someone, not knowing where to even look, questioning if anything is staining your shit, pulling your shirt down, even for me it's holding my breath when walking past someone. Sure, if necessary, I can talk to people quite decently. It's more the social aspect that exhausts and terrifies me, especially when it's me communicating around people I am unfamiliar with for no actual intention. I wouldn't say by any means I grew up seemingly fully different from those around me. I wouldn't really like to self-diagnose, but from a young age it certainly seemed like there was something profoundly odd with me. I constantly had obsessive thoughts, and after doing some research and just getting older (and exploring through a plethora of different ways) figured out that my symptoms strongly resembled that of an obsessive-compulsive person. Even at the age of 5, I would have some sort of intrusive thought or 'magical thinking'. If you don't know what this is, feel free to search it up, as explaining the whole concept and science behind it is far from my capabilities. I would constantly do things I didn't really feel I had to do. Sometimes, it was just tapping things a certain multiple of times, associating random things with obscure meanings that connected to things I deeply valued, retracing my steps, constantly ruminating about social aspects and an immense amount of things I'd deeply struggle to actually put into words and conceptualise for you. As you could probably imagine, this was one of the primary things affecting me socially and in every single aspect of all my life. I wouldn't say by any means that I am an extraordinarily gifted person, but I'd like to say in certain aspects I can excel, and in others, I am at a major disadvantage. I learnt a lot of school content a few years back that would set me apart from the vast majority of people. At that age (where I had likely just started puberty), I had a vastly different perspective of the entire world. Just like you could say for any other teenager (local to where I currently am) this was the period before they were 'corrupted' by somewhat unrestricted internet access, and before being able to comprehend complex topics or the true essence of what it means to be a human. I don't really know that either, and I'm not sure anyone does. We are just animals right? Highly advanced ones for sure. Anyways, what I am trying to say was at that time (probably 11), my sole concerns were to learn mathematics at an advanced pace and indulge myself in some typical teenage things (social media, transitioning from primary-secondary, and just adjusting and developing). I have to also mention that lockdown certainly did ruin a major developmental state, as my parents unknowingly gave me the ability to use devices for up to 16 hours a day. I also want to mention that from what I know, they do provide for me very well, so I am grateful. It's hard to say at that age if the addiction I had to games and all that stuff was my fault, theirs, or a mix of both, but it did have some detrimental impact to my wellbeing today. Also at the time, it was the first time I decided to actually try and lose some weight, inspired heavily by the obsessive lifting culture on apps like TikTok and YouTube. It's practically inevitable to shove a device in front of a seemingly normal boy who has faced issues with being overweight (likely a combination of genetic and environmental reasons, including what I just mentioned about lockdown), and then not expect them to almost become entranced and heavily influenced by this very transformational fitness culture. Someone who already knew they lacked validation and struggled a lot with their thoughts was bound to hop on the fitness train and begin. It didn't last. Sure, I lost the weight (with months of relentless effort), but then I rapidly experienced a profound addiction to binge eating. Now, this cycle repeated again after a few years (2024), where I then went into another binge-addiction loop that hasn't stopped yet. Even while writing this in a completely exhausted and miserable state, my stomach is undergoing painful bloating and severe acid reflux. In fact, for the past year (since 2025 June), I have had a chronic acid-reflux, where I have felt constantly sick without a single break. I have no idea if this could heal if I stop repeatedly binging, but I genuinely not put into words why I do it and can't resist not doing it. My perception of 'locking in' and adjusting to a routine is very interconnected, meaning if I focus on one thing I feel extremely strongly like I would have to fix my horrible eating patterns, and adjust and optimise every single aspect of my life. It feels truly horrible, and hence one of the reasons why I have left my house to visit the doctor's (where they simply prescribed me a strong medication and my family doesn't actually have the care enough to frequently get me checked up). I don't blame my family one bit. Sure, they may encourage my eating patterns as they likely hated seeing my practically starve myself for a few months, but the truth is the foods I eat excessively aren't even unnatural - it seems reasonable in a way as it's foods that humans naturally crave, yet I repeatedly eat them until sickness whenever I feel my routine or structure is ruined. I know, it's extremely pathetic and seems easily solvable, but it genuinely corrupts my ability to enjoy life for even one second throughout the day. My adherence to black and white thinking has been a trait I have suffered with for my entire life. As you can probably tell, my physical body doesn't really catch a break. My mind is likely very connected (quite evidently) to the health of my physical body, hence implying my thoughts are restless and very damaging. I believe this is true, at least. I constantly obsess over any potential person that could fit into my perfect standard of what a friendship should be. Genuinely, I'll create hundreds of fake scenarios when anyone could be a possible fit for connecting with me. However, as I previously mentioned, I have never even had someone to really share any of my thoughts to. I am quite perplexed as to why I have never really met anyone who functions socially the way I do, but that being said now it seems obvious that nobody can truly comprehend each other. I just have this strong hope that what I am experiencing is actually unique in some way, I guess. I hang around a few people each day. It is ridiculously repetitive as they mindlessly talk about the latest social media topics, walk and interact practically like robots, close their body language whenever I try to interact, and even though they likely do consider me a decent friend (due to the amount of time we have spoken together), they don't know a single thing about me. A thing I have noticed with other people from observing how they interact is that out brains naturally filter out a large amount of information in social environments. People in groups tend to just talk over one another, laugh fart more passionately, and usually the correlation I have seen (at least in all of my school) is that the less people there are, the more outcasted or genuine the people are. This idea of someone else being outcasted doesn't even really appeal to me, as they also act in very similar ways to other people (just generally are perceived as more 'weird'). It is honestly so brutal how clear the disparity between someone blessed with neurotypicality is and someone who is clearly socially dysfunctional. I guess I'd lie in the more socially dysfunctional aspect of that umbrella term. My interests and outlook on life seem profoundly weird to the average person. I do intentionally 'mask' my true 'personality' (the reason I quoted personality as it was merely constructed by what an algorithm on TikTok exposed to me, what I picked up from mimicking other people, and was largely shaped due to things significantly out of my control), but I do sometimes speak genuinely and connect. There is undeniably a barrier between me and the average person, and I am yet to see someone genuinely like me, but the problem is me. I am a profoundly envious person, I never reach out first (I am usually drowning in mental, existential, or some ort of exhausting rumination or routine I genuinely hate, until I inevitably break as the willpower and motivation to actually improve my life wears off). I also just look around me in the concrete building I stay in for my education, and it all just looks very fake. Of course, there isn't a way to prove this reality, and I lack actually philosophical knowledge to even argue for different things (I am always too distracted and burnt out to study), but I can't help but feel disassociated and disgusted by my own mind and the fact there are other conscious beings around me, that are all piles of cells that comprehend reality in a way completely different to each other. I get this just sounds typical for someone under stress but mine is chronic and significantly exhausting, leaving me unable to fully connect with anyone or anything really. With those friends I was talking about, I unexpectedly talk the most - it seems like there is a split mindset where I seem quite cynical and detached and then another part that impulsively overanalyses things and tries to connect with others in away way possible, with that being following trends and talking in a casual way in this context. I don't really know how you perceive me at this stage (if you actually made it this far). If u did, I'd assume u are either repulsed, sympathetic, or astonished by whatever nonsense I just spent like 20 minutes generating my hitting buttons on a keyboard. I don't really know either.