Friends - Not Friends

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It's taken me a really long time to realize this, but I think I'm like honestly s**t at maintaining friendships. As much as I really do want to connect and go do things, I constantly prefer to spend time by myself and I don't often respond to messages people send me when I get like that. It kind of puts me in a hard position though because once I'm out of my "mood", or as I like to think of it "when I come back to earth/reality/etc", I realize that time escaped me like wild and no one wants to talk to me anymore. For a long time I didn't understand this, but I feel as though maybe people think I'm ignoring them? I'm just not good at reaching out to people and engaging in "hey" "hi" "whats up" "nothin u" kinda conversations. I pretty much only think to reply if it's about something relevant currently happening that requires attention. I think maybe this confuses people because I sometimes write very lengthy texts telling people how lovely they are or to have a good day, but then I don't speak to them for months without realizing.

I'm really trying to get better at this, but it feels like I'm forcing a friendship or like I'm just cycling on my phone screen typing and deleting messages but never getting to the point of send (sometimes my words get stuck in my head) because I can never get the message right or I don't know what to say. Often times people ask me how my day was and I literally just ignore the message, not because I don't care but because I don't know how my day was? I don't really know how I feel most of the time, I guess I'm just okay or good or content or neutral or idk, so I'm not really sure how to accurately reply. Not to mention, I'm the person who forgets to ask "how are you" because I myself don't see the point in this question and then people start to think I don't care. Any advise or anyone feel similar?

I have no friends. Since I was 15 and my ''last'' friendship ended I knew internally I would probably never have another friend again as I was just too weird in the eyes of NT's to make it ''work''. This was a very depressing thing for me to accept in the teen years that followed, when I was 17 I was especially depressed over it and was desperate for friends.

At 28 now having friendships seems absolutely insane to me. Like why wold I give another person my own time when I only have a few good days each week when I'm not in physical pain? and I do enjoy those days as much as I can. I went for a long walk (2 hours yesterday) and enjoyed it. I was even able to run. It was the first time in the last year where my lower back or my bowels weren't killing me in pain.

Also I'm much too busy for friendships. Too many appointments, too many things to do in terms of house work, cooking, running errands and trying to improve my life by getting my GED (yes at 28 years old I still have no high school equivalent! it's shameful but I'm hoping to change this).

And you know what? there are plenty of other adults who don't have many close friends. Some don't have any and they aren't on the spectrum either they're just too exhausted from working and dealing with life to have relationships. It's not as ''abnormal'' not to have friends.

Why are you in pain?

You seem like an okay person. Why wouldn't somebody want to be friends with you?

To the question 'how are you?' I reply 'normal' 95% of the time. I'm not sure whether this answer is grammatical in English but this is not my native language anyway. I sometimes even forget to greet people with a 'hi!' when I meet them. I actually never approached anyone to make friends - all the friends I ever had approached me. The maintenance of relationships is also mostly handled by the other side, so if the person starts to lose interest in talking to me, I never bother to do anything about it and let the person drift away. Needless to say I've lost almost all of my relationships with non-relatives. I sometimes feel guilty because of this but I find it impossible to approach people and make friends - the whole concept feels very alien to me. I wouldn't find all this a problem but sometimes I feel a bit lonely. That's probably the reason why I'm here.

I have a bowel disease and a degenerative disc. Why wouldn't anyone want to be around me? well... I'm not the most social person for one thing. I don't think I have made an effort to have a conversation with someone in real life in years.