I cannot be happy without friends

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Well let me start by saying i'm 22 years old, have just started a college course in mechanical engineering, recently became a born again christian and attend church when someone is able to drive me there, i help out at my local church once a month to give the homeless somewhere to sleep and eat for the night, and tomorrow il be commissioned to become a street pastor (helping drunk people at the weekend)

all these are positive things, but my entire life has been overshadowed by an abyss of depression and anxiety

most of day is spent daydreaming and fantasizing about what it would be like if i had friends at school, going to the park together, the laughter, sharing experiences, enjoying the best life has to offer and looking forward to the future

i cannot even begin to describe the depth of the pain and sorrow i have and do experience. but i'm hoping someone on this forum will know where im coming from, because no NT has ever been able to understand

for those out there who have been lonely all their lives and YEARN for friendship.... can the nightmare ever end?

I hope so. I'm in high school now and have been cast out of pretty much every group for liking the wrong music, clothes etc. and being too straight-laced (never had a sip of alcohol or tried a single cigarette or drug). Hoping things start to look up for me. You too.

You'd think that, at my age, the nightmare would've end a long time ago. You'd think that, by now, I would've been married with kids, living in my house in the suburbs with my family, car, boat, dog and cat, going on vacations, watching my stocks and bonds, and planning c=vacations. Nope. I'm as lost at sea as when I was a teen. I have good and bad days, but sometimes I just don't know. At my age, I think this is it. Probably all down hill from here.

Yes, the nightmare can end. When dealing with lonliness it is not just a matter of meeting people. You must also be the type of person people are looking for. That is something you can work on and improve thru learning, understanding and making good choices.

At your age (and Yayoi's too) life is just beginning. Give it a good and positive effort and you will improve the chances that it will work out well find a good ammount of happiness and satisfaction. I am not saying there won't be problems and difficulties. There always are. But those too can be overcome, or worked around.

Be fighters, not quitters. I don't mean in the physical sense, but mentally.

What Toy_Soldier said. Taking an active and not a passive approach towards social skills - learn about social skills by reading books, asking family members for advice, etc. Fight for your chance at happiness. It's hard and you're in a sad place right now but there can be light at the end of the tunnel. Perhaps a good place to start even would be to make online friends here and then extend communication skills you learn IRL. Perhaps even see if there's an autistic meetup group in your local area. Many of my close IRL friends also have AS, probably in part because it's a lot easier to establish and maintain friendships with them due to their higher tolerance and understanding of social faux pas and also tolerance for me dropping in and out of contact from time to time due to social exhaustion.

What you're doing re. church is a really good start actually. One of the easiest ways to try and establish friendships is through shared interests/recreational groups. Congratulations on taking this first step and sticking with it. Also congratulations on helping the needy, it is a good thing to do and speaks of good character.

Yes, the nightmare can end. It sounds, honestly, like you have a pretty good start on ending it.

Hang in there.

When I was just a little bit younger than you are, I was living that nightmare.

Fast-forward fifteen years-- I will not tell you my life is a bed of roses (it ain't). But I will tell you that I just got off the phone with someone who's been a friend for 10 years. I will tell you that there are other friends in my life (I have FOUR! FOUR!! And they're all GOOD friends, that I've had for over a decade!! !) I will tell you that we hang out and do stuff and talk...

...and I will tell you that we talk about our marriages and our kids.

You have to work at it-- what the above poster said about making yourself someone people want to talk to. You have to turn over a lot of rocks to find people who will want to talk to someone that you can be comfortable making yourself.

Well, if you're in a good church, you are standing in a rock garden. As a lay pastor on the street, you are definitely standing in a rock garden. Get turning-- and DO NOT GIVE UP.

Need to be conscious that a happy immersion in having lots of reliable friends is an imaginary ideal. Most folks in NT society don't have it either, at last reliably on it to last, they are under pressure to keep in favour at sacrifice of having any distinctive identities, they can be well connected at one time and poorly connected at another time. But competitive NT society has a pressure to pretend you have it all the time.

I appreciate the reply's, i have some optimism that finally getting a diagnosis will be beneficial in the sense that i can finally get the support i need, but theres still the fact of knowing im different, and to be honest knowing im different crushes me

and then i feel anger knowing that i was robbed of a normal life before i was even born

i know i have to accept that my life will always be a struggle, with temporary periods of peace, but ...who can compensate us for the pain we endure?

Best advice I can give: Stop thinking about it. The more you think, the worse it gets.

Technically speaking, I do have friends, and seeing them makes me happy for a few hours, but not as effectively as one might assume. Making friends and improving your social skills is a good idea, but don't expect too much.

Right now, I just try to be as busy a possible. I do a lot of extra university stuff, so I don't have time for obsessing about my misery.