Very sadly same. I have struggled so hard to maintain friendships and family connections throughout my life and am fortunate to have finally found some friends who are patient and persistent enough to basically force me to keep in touch with them, but don’t take it personally if I vanish for 6 months without a word. I’m just much happier on my own with my cats, plants, hobbies, and partner and don’t even actually remember other people exist a lot of the time.

That I may be autistic. Literally had a friend of 10+ years who works with nonverbal pre-K kiddies with autism say to me “You know you’re autistic, right?” So I started taking some tests online and reading some books and stuff, and dang, that would make a lot of sense. Not sure if I want to try and seek an official diagnosis as it is apparently pretty difficult to access in my area. But as an AFAB elder millennial who has struggled my entire life with making friends, interacting socially, and progressing in careers it is really freaking interesting to maybe finally have a reason for that.

ETA that I have spoken to my therapist about this at length and she has casually agreed that I may meet a lot of the criteria and we are spending a lot of time breaking this all down. I’m very fortunate to have the access to mental healthcare that I do have.

Hail yourself! I was just scrolling back to see if anyone had met any of the boys. I am sad I haven’t met any of them yet. Seems like all of them would be excellent folks to get a beer and talk about weird shit with. It’s strange how parasocial relationships work. I’ve been listening to them twice a week for 8 years and feel like they’re my friends.

I am so jealous. If I could meet one person in the world it would be Dolly. She is my absolute hero. I don’t even think I’d be able to speak, I would just start crying.

It’s weird, right? As long as I am being a helper I can do anything. I think this is a pretty big clue that we should value ourselves as much as we do our friends!

I lived and worked in New York and met a ton of celebrities/big names there. James Gandolfini was really nice. Bjork was not particularly nice. Tori Amos is one of the sweetest, most open and genuine people I’ve ever met. Ethan Hawke was a gross dick. Rik Okasek smells bad but is nice. I got shitcanned with Claude Coleman, my favorite drummer. My favorite celeb I have ever met though is Joan Jett, who I have met many times and is absolutely the best. It was super funny the one time I was just hanging out randomly on the street with a group of friends and this short little muscular blond lady rushed up to me, gave me a hard hug, and rushed away and I got to be like, “Oh, that was just Joan Jett” to my friends.

This is great and something I also strive for. I find often that I gravitate towards other neurodiverse folks, and knowing that someone else is having difficulty navigating a given situation often makes me feel like not only that I can step up and help them, but that I want to do so. I wouldn’t if it was just me, but I will always order coffee for my BFF rather than making her have a social interaction I know she is worried about. I’ll also happily make phone calls to doctors or to set appointments for friends and I would rather die on the floor than do it for myself. This might be a clue to ways around my social anxiety, if I could learn to treat myself as a friend who needs help.