Most people my age consider themselves socially awkward. Some of us do it despite evidence we would find to the contrary if we didn't just give up when something less than ideal happened. Some of us have very good reasons for this.
When I was little, my mom had a friend, Angie. Angie had a daughter my age, Karly. We lived in the same subdivision. We were best friends. When I was five, Karly moved away to the neighboring town (really far away when you're five) and a couple years later she got really into gymnastics and I haven't seen her for years.
Then we come to the friendship gap. This is the time when, if I decided I wanted to hang out with people, I had to be the proactive one and sometimes I would screw up their friend-group dynamics and it was pretty much like that MLP song "BBBFF," except that I have a sister. There was also a guy across the street who we played with, but he was kind of a jerk. The thing that highlights this period, though, is that no one my age wanted to play with me. Some of them would if I asked, of course. But no one really sought me out as a playmate.
When I was ten, I became friends with two wonderful girls my age. We would play pretend and do mildly sports-ish things and it was really awesome because we all wanted to be together. One of the girls later molested the other one, but fortunately she ended up going to a different school and the one who's still my best friend went to the same schools as me.
But the thing is, when I say I'm socially awkward I mean that I expect that no one wants to hang out with me. It isn't anyone's fault. It isn't even a self-esteem issue. I just expect that people have better things to do than spend time with that weird girl who's going to mess up their friend-group dynamic. It takes a while for me to not feel like I'm imposing when people are already having their own conversations.
So, status at the end of high school: three BFFs, a boyfriend, and a really awesome wider group of friends. So I was doing really well and feeling like a normal person, and I was really excited to go to college. Really, really excited. That summer, I got my roommate's e-mail address. We started writing back and forth, and it was great. She played guitar and I sang and we were going to be awesome friends. And then I brought up that I'm into gay rights issues and she said, "Nothing personal, but I'm going to talk to Housing Services and get a different roommate."
It doesn't matter that she was kind of a scumbag. It doesn't matter that we don't see eye-to-eye on a very important issue of human rights. What she had written meant, "I find your values so morally repulsive that I can't bear to live with you." And my values are fine. It's hers that are screwy. But it still hurt. What hurt more, though, was coming to college and having a single that was supposed to be a double and feeling like I had failed at the most basic part of being a normal person: making friends. There was a dance the first week and I was really excited for it, but I suck at normal-person dancing and I didn't know anyone there and I ended up going home in the middle and crying because I felt like I sucked at life. I have some good friends at college now, and half the people I see seem to know me. Even know me by name, even though I don't know theirs. And I still don't want to text my friends and ask them when they're going to dinner (we all went together at 6 every night last year) because, if they haven't texted me, that means I'm imposing. It must. Even though that makes no sense. In reality, objectively, it means I abandoned them as soon as any work was required to go to dinner with them. But what if I do ruin their friend-group dynamic? I didn't last year, but this is the fifth week of school.
Anyway, I have a text to send out today. Probably two. Wish me luck.
Important thing I left out: last semester, I did have a roommate. She was a freshman transfer student. Her hobbies were playing frisbee, doing charity work, and not talking to me. When she came int, the room, I would say "Hello" and she would say nothing. When she talked to her family about how incredibly lonely she was and I offered to introduce her to my friends over dinner, she turned me down. I ended up talking to a therapist about it; when I pass her on the sidewalk now, I try to smile at her and she looks away, and I have no idea what I did that made her hate me so much. There were important things she didn't tell me, too, like when she went home for a weekend so she could celebrate her birthday with her friends and I didn't know if she had stayed over with someone or been hit by a car. Because I do like people, and I wish the best for people even when they glare at me for giving them a heads-up that they're going to have the room to themself for the next three hours.
My roommate this year is awesome, though. We're both pretty laid-back and introverted, but we see eye-to-eye with each other and have some really good discussions, which is nice.