AS people with few friends: Do you enjoy being alone or are

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Sometimes I just feel like I have to be alone, people can overwhelm me and I can't deal with their drama so I hide myself away. I don't particularly enjoy it but I find enough to do to distract myself. Last couple years, I've opened up quite a bit and started doing things but I've found that there aren't a lot of people to do things with. Loneliness does seem to be becoming an issue.

When I was aged between 12 and 14, it really got to me that I had no friends. I spoke to a few people in my class and stuff, but that was as far as it went. Nobody wanted to be best friends with me. Nobody really wanted me in their crowd. Nobody invited me over to their house at week-ends. I know they done things together nearly every week-end without me. Then my cousins were all starting to see their friends, and so I couldn't even see my cousins at week-ends either, because they all got invited over friend's houses and out to the cinema, etc. I got very upset, and spent a lot of week-ends crying alone in my room, and my brother got onto me for not having any friends. I don't blame him. I mean, every single child makes friends at school, unless they have a condition that affects their social behaviour, and even then they can still have a couple of friends to talk to. So I suppose it's very, very abnormal for a child not to have friends at school. My brother is a shy NT, but even he had a crowd at school and was always going out with them. But me - I had nobody. This started making me feel jealous of all of my cousins for having their own friends. I used to get into such a state about it. But each time I said anything to them, they were like, ''you can't rule my life, you can't stop me from having other friends'', etc. It was a horrible time of my life, and I became very depressed. I did finally find myself a crowd of friends, but they were the type who go in a mood with you all the time, whatever you done, until it became a stupid habit. Then one of them came to hate me, and did her best to make me be seen on my own. But that happened in my last year of school, so it didn't matter too much because that year soon ended and I went to college, where I made new friends.

I don't see my school friends now, and I only see 2 of my college friends, but my social skills must have got better because I do have quite a few friends now, which I am happy about. In fact, I feel less lonely than I ever have before in my life. And it's fighting off depression for me. If I didn't have friends now, I think I would be depressed. I do feel depressed because I have an anxiety disorder (on top of my AS), but having friends is helping me to ''come out of my shell'' and enjoy the world around me.

I do like to have time to myself, and I sometimes think it's best to go out shopping on my own, rather than having to be beholden to other people. I like to just leisurely plan out my day and get what buses I want and come home on what buses I want. But I still like to see friends aswell, like arrange to meet with them. I think this is true for everyone, though. I have a cousin who is older than me and is very sociable and popular and does a lot of things with her mates, but she says she still likes some time on her own to do some bits she needs to do, without having to rush around and wait for other people or anything.

I prefer to be by myself or with a very small collection of people (3 at the most) or my head feels as if it is about to implode.

I has no friends.
Only the three in my family,
my doctors,
and the occasional beau-
often not even that.

I don't know if I'd like to have friends. Having never had any, the concept kind of eludes me.