Mourning the loss of a place where I made friends.

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I go to this festival every summer. It's located across the country, but I drive 16 hours each way every year to get there. It's meant to be a music festival, but for many people who go every year, it's an adopted family. Going to this festival was my first experience of being somewhere I didn't feel unwanted. Its not that I suddenly made a lot of friends, it's that they were OK with me lurking in the background. I felt safe and free from bullying for the first time in my life. Over the years, I went every summer, and I made some friends who even sometimes hang out with me during the rest of the year. I feel like I'm a part of it, even though I'm still a little on the outside. This is really my ONLY experience of healthy friendship. Everywhere else in my life, I feel like I have to put myself into this tiny little socially-acceptable box in order to be included in social circles.

This festival just announced that this will be the last year. There just isn't the same demand for this kind of music festival, which was developed by political radicals and hippies. I'm so sad. Other people are expressing sadness, too. But I don't think they really feel the same way as I do. They can make friends other places. They have spouses and best buddies and others they can socialize with. I really don't.

I guess I'm grieving and having a pity party, all at the same time. I know that other things come along. I know that I'll survive. I have more skill now and maybe I'll be able to make some real friends that are also local. That would be a real blessing, but I'm 40 years old now, and I've been thinking that maybe soon I'll have more friends for almost my whole life. I remember being a kid and every year when I blew out my birthday candles, I wished that I could make friends. (In hindsight, I wonder why I didn't catch on sooner that that wishing on birthday candles doesn't work.

Thanks for listening. I just needed to share with people who might understand how truly unique and special it's been for me to have healthy friendships, like I've had at this festival.

You should be able to keep contact with some of them, even if just online, as well as meet some new folk as you don't have to attend a hippie style music festival in order to enjoy their friendship. (it sounds like fun really). There are plenty of other places you can meet people of similar interests to your own, especially online special forums and so on. Usually you'll find close friends who share your interests.

Having just a few good and genuine friends is better than having too many and you hardly make contact with them. I've never had many friends but value the few that I have.

Thanks Envi. I'm doing better now. I'll be on the lookout for other ways to socialize with people, but I know it won't be the same. Some life events are unique and you just have to appreciate them for what they are without trying to replicate them.

I wish I had the magic key that lets other people continue and deepen their friendships. I just seem to be missing that part, where you do what it takes to make a friendship last through the years. Maybe someday soon I'll learn how to do that.

That's a bummer, but maybe you will find a new place soon.

Maybe someone from that festival will start a new one to replace it? even you could try to start something new. I'm sure many other people feel the same way.

Aww that sucks. Unfortunately I don't know what you could do except that you find something similar and maybe invite the people who you met at the festival to attend? I wish I had friends like that, but I never really have.

That's sad. I've experienced this sort of thing too - good things that just come to an end. Why don't you ask some of the other people who've been going to this festival what they're going to do instead? Maybe some new activity will be born out of the loss of this one. Of course, it won't be the same, but it might be fun too, a chance to meet people. Don't give up.

Yah. There are a lot of people talking about what to create next. i won't be the one doing it though. I'm accepted but not really in the middle of things. When I tried to be more central, I just get politely ignored. Actually, I just asked people if they wanted to go see the cherry blossoms with me and I got no answer from the ten people I emailed. They enjoy me coming along, but they aren't willing to follow.

Maybe I'm ready for more than just being tolerated? Maybe I'll find a group that is more into my full participation? I'd like to believe that. We'll see. I wonder how I really come off to other people. Most of the time, when I tell someone that I'm on the spectrum, they are shocked and disbelieving. But then they don't "have time" to really form a close friendship with me. So I'm too normal to be seen as really having a disability, but too weird to be seen as someone worth investing your time and energy into.

It's their loss - you sound really nice.