Today, I turn 21. I can legally drink, smoke, gamble, fly a light aircraft, enlist in the army without my parents' permission, and pay more in taxes THANKS IRS! I always like to look to the future and promise myself that there's something more to come, but I feel like that isn't necessarily the case anymore.

I feel like I missed so much in my earlier years and even in college. I'm banned from most frats on my campus because I'm bisexual, and they didn't want me sleeping with the frat boys (which admittedly I would have done given the chance). I went to Catholic middle school & Catholic high school because I used to get bullied in public school thanks to my diminutive size at that point in time, and I had tried to off myself in school during school hours to try and make it all stop.

I've gotten better over the years, and while I'm out of the Catholic education system now, it's not like it didn't have a huge impact on me. Even back in 7th and 8th grades, I knew there was something off about me, I didn't behave like everyone else, I didn't make friends as easily as everyone else, I never started dating, I never went to the school dances despite living 2 minutes from my public middle school, and more.

Going into the Catholic system was a change, and I remember when I first spoke with the principal of my first Catholic school. She told me that despite me being an atheist, I had to take religion classes due to the affiliation of the school, which I thought was fair enough. She told me that the best way to get through religion class was to treat it like another history class, and not get too invested into it. I admired that principal for accommodating me, despite the significant ideological differences between myself and the Church.

Despite those efforts and others made by people in the community at that school, I always felt out of place, like I didn't belong there and everyone else knew something I didn't. I didn't go to any of the school social events because my graduating class was 23 people, and I was scared of people finding out that I wasn't like them. No one in my graduating class knew that I wasn't Catholic, except for the priest who gave us our diplomas at graduation. I liked that priest, and he respected me for being different. For everyone else in the class, when they went up to the altar to receive their diplomas, he recited a short prayer over their bowed heads. For me, he instead shook my hand and said, "Peace be with you. Good luck, my friend". I was the only one in my graduating class not wearing silver cords.

Going to high school was another paradigm shift. The school was incredibly different and had made a name for themselves for being a high-tech school since the 90s and having a world-class athletic program. We even had one of our students go to the Olympics while I was there. Unfortunately, behind the veil of grandeur, it was one of the most isolating places I'd ever spent time. I didn't fit in with anyone, I was always seen as the weird one who never got picked for anything and spent the entirety of my gym classes in the secluded weight room. I didn't have many friends, but the ones I did have are still with me to this day.

The thing about co-ed high school is that it's a revelation for almost everyone in the areas of romantic attraction and sexual exploration. I'm sure you can imagine what a group of ~650 sexually repressed high school kids would do given the freedom to explore themselves a bit. There wasn't a closet in that school that was safe to enter, and everyone had to have walked in on someone at some point or another during the four years they spent in that school. The only closet no one walked into was the one I was in.

I realized around my sophomore year that some of the boys on the baseball team were doing something to me, and I eventually realized that I was quite bi. The downside of this personal revelation was that being anything other than arrow-straight was outright banned at that school, and the administration could expel you on suspicion of being fruity. I kept a low profile, and never publicly acknowledged anything to the administration, even as one of my former friends was almost expelled for trying to bring her long-term girlfriend to prom. I think they live in Mykonos now.

Backtracking a little, I had to go through a school-ordered psych evaluation back in public school when I was suspended for the aforementioned attempted offing. I was diagnosed with Asperger's and Major Depressive Disorder when I was 15 after 3 years of counselling and psychological help. My parents were not too enthused, and refused to put me on meds to help me feel better because, "A real man doesn't need pills to wake up in the morning". My mother threw out the paperwork related to my diagnosis so no matter what, I couldn't register for extra exam time or extra help through my school for my academics. I worked my ass off to graduate with honors, even when the school administration was keen on getting me out of that school before I graduated.

Unfortunately, I spent so much time working that I never did anything which would traditionally be classified as a "traditional high school experience". I never went to the lock-ins except one my Freshman year when I thought I was supposed to lock myself in a closet (ironic, I know), not the gymnasium; I never joined any clubs, I never did student government, I never went to the dances, and perhaps most importantly, I never went to either of my proms. I missed out on prom because I was too scared to be outed or expose myself to administration at the event or on prom weekend, and I felt like I didn't deserve to go to prom because I had failed at finding a partner. There was a boy I wanted to take with me to prom, but I knew that even though he was gay, if we became an item we would both be expelled, so I couldn't make a move.

Instead of going to prom, I stayed home that night and weekend and wrote lab reports. Both times. I filled my days and nights with work to try and distract myself from the truth that I was incredibly depressed and only getting worse. It worked for a time, that is until I graduated and went to college in another state. There, the coursework only got tougher, and while I was fine with tough work, I didn't do anything outside of class. My days consisted of waking up, going to class, coming home, working for hours on end, and sleeping. That was it, and that's still what it is today. I tried to participate in frat rush my freshman year, but when one of the leaders of one of the frats saw me eyeing up a guy across the house, I was escorted out to the front lawn and called so many slurs I can't list them all here. I was banned from almost every frat on frat row that night, and to this day almost 30 years later, I haven't set foot there again, even though I currently live only a few blocks from there.

By that time, I was already fully out and accepted myself for who I was, and my parents had come around to the idea that they might not be getting biological children from me at all, and that I loved men and women. College is supposed to be a time to figure out who you are and where you're going in life, and I wanted to do that. I had long since outgrown my former diminutive size, and I had bulked up too, now weighing over 250lbs. However, my social anxiety was still screwing with me, and I never made any real friends on campus. I still cried myself to sleep at night, I still filled my days with work to distract myself from the pain, & I still didn't have any social interaction outside of my roommates and lab partners. I know there's an old trope of "lab partners to lovers", but that's exponentially harder when you're a huge nerd that's mostly interested in other guys and your lab partners are eyeing up the 20-something lab TA (thanks Liz). I thought college would finally give me an opportunity to come out of my shell and embrace what I really wanted to do, instead it only forced my deeper into my shell, which just so happened to be outside of a metaphorical closet.

Now in my 3rd year of 5, nothing has changed, other than that I need to wear a mask to every class now. I'm pacing around an empty classroom trying to think about what I've really done in my life and where I want it to go, but there's always been that voice in the back of my head that tells me to just keep my head down and let life take it's course while I just ride my way forward in the corporate world, resigning myself to years of gray cubicles and maybe one day a walnut desk and a corner office like my mother has now at 52 while making 7 figures. I've had a few partners since starting high school, and while all were epic failures (3 of my 4 partners declared a change in sexuality and left me and the fourth was a gold digger), I feel like I never really learned anything from them. I'm well off financially, I bought my dream car last year, I have a great life on paper, I have a family that loves me for who I am, but there's always one thing that I can't run away from.

The overwhelming sadness that depression puts in my life is unavoidable, and honestly quite debilitating. I can't get out of bed some days, and most nights when I get in bed I just cry into my body pillow simply because my life has gotten to a point where I don't interact with anyone IRL anymore and the loneliness is overbearing. I go entire weeks without talking to someone face-to-face outside of my roommates, and holding everything inside is getting to be too much. For the entire month of January I only submitted 3 assignments because I couldn't muster up the motivation to write any reports or take any quizzes, or even get out of bed several days.

I've always been the nerd out of the bunch, and I turned that into a successful business building custom PCs for friends and family, which I think are more like pieces of art than computers, but that's my subjective opinion. I voice acted when I was younger and experimenting with my new bassy voice. I turned everything I could into a moneymaking opportunity short of doing OF because I don't have the looks or the equipment to do something like that, and I made a pretty good chunk of change doing it. I realized then that money wasn't what I needed. It wasn't time either, because I had plenty of that too. It was companionship and emotional connection that I was missing all along, and well, that's probably not going to change anytime soon.

One of my roommates got me to finally pick up an online dating app, which I had sworn off years before because I like to do things the traditional way, but I realized that as times change, so must tactics. I actually got a partner out of it, but they changed their sexuality a month in and left me, so I'm back at square one on that front. Like I said before, I have crippling social anxiety as a result of the Asperger's, so talking to people is incredibly difficult for me, especially with my speech impediment.

While by definition I am now a functioning adult, I can't help but feel like I'm the furthest thing from that. Normally for people's 21st birthdays, they go out drinking with friends and have a blast at the club, or go on a romantic walk with a significant other at night along the riverbank before going home for birthday sex, or something else. At the very least, one could expect a phone call from their parents or SO wishing them a happy birthday, but all I get is a tag on a facebook post from my abusive father who got my age wrong. This year, I won't be doing any of that simply because I don't have anyone to go do those things with. Sure, I could go out to one of the gay bars here and I might have a bit of fun, but in loud, intense environments like that my brain likes to go into anxiety attack mode and I black out, and lord knows I'm not paying $5500 for a ride in the weewoo wagon over a $15 sangria. The only thing I can really do is finish the remainder of my class time in this one room with no windows or natural light, then at 5pm go back to my apartment with no natural light and start writing reports again. The tedium doesn't stop, and the only thing I can do is deal with it.

I hate not having friends.