Small community

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This is kind of a broad question, but I wonder if others here have longings to belong to a small community of individuals where others may have outside connections but mainly their social lives are centered in the group. I come from an uncommon backround I guess. My kindergarten thru 8th grade years I attended two different parochial schools, both of which happened to be very small (they are both presently closed down). Both were similar in that 1st thru 4th grade were in one classroom and 5th thru 8th in another. Each progressive year of my education the classes became smaller, from maybe 20 when I was in 1st or 2nd grade to 6 my 7th and 8th grade years. Now I did get to know alienation and social blundering but these memories are more scattered, individual occurances as opposed to daily strife. Some of these other kids had friends outside of school with neighbors, people in extracirricular activities they were involved with, and whatnot, but the quantity of time they spent with them was a small fraction of the time we as a class spent together in class and other school functions. So the familiarity I had with this small group sustained a fair amount of social comfort for a prolonged time period.

I became so morbidly depressed my first year in a high school of 1000. A combination of things led up to that but my immense struggle to make meaningful social connections and seeing the vast networks people made with one another with such ease blew my mind. The kind of people who I liked and were open to enjoying my personality but tended to be a part of this complex networking that I couldn't understand, how they did it and why it was so desirable. Today I would not feel the depressing loneliness I got from that, more of a callous indifference. I can be reasonably content with the world I've stepped into in 2006, but does anyone share my sense that living in a small community (neurotypical) with limited connections to the outside is more satisfying and healthful for you? I could go into greater length but can I sense a response? I have a certain yearning for a lifestyle like I had when I was younger.

Agh, this idea feels too broad; I just struggle sometimes to wrap my mind around people who have such a high quantity of social connections, not taking into account their ability to handle it sensorily or anything like that. My dad in fact has a profession like that yet it just seems so very unnatural to me for whatever reason?

cohousing communities are based on this concept:

http://www.cohousing.org/

I feel more comfortable around smaller communities. My class in grade school had about 50 or so students by 8th grade (this is not inordinately small, but smaller than public school) and I felt more comfortable with knowing every single student.

When I went to public school for my senior year, it was a total shock. There were I think about 250 students in my graduating class alone.

So I spent almost the whole year in the art wing-- aside from daily classes-- where I knew all the students and felt very comfortable with our devoted professor, Mr. Maguire (who we all called "Mac"). He even gave us all nicknames. Mine was Paté, sine I once asked why I didn't yet have a nickname; "What am I? Chopped liver?"

So it was Paté from then on.