I'd made a few friends in my early years—in primary school, secondary school and college—but those friendships haven't lasted up to now, and ended when I left each school. I didn't really feel comfortable going out to do stuff with people from work since I prefer to separate my personal life from my business life. So when I discovered this subreddit I tried for a while to meet someone. I'm also autisitc, so meeting people and talking about stuff in person from the start isn't as easy as doing it online for me.

It wasn't for friendship I was after the first few tries I admit, but after a while I developed a bit of social anxiety that the COVID Pandemic didn't help. I suffered with it for years, and saw it was getting worse. I didn't like that I might one day feel too anxious to be with people outside a work setting—which I can hardly stand as is—but I resolved that something needed to be done.

We chatted for about 2 months before we met this past Saturday. We couldn't really find the time because she's up in Tennesse and I'm down here OTP South. It took finding just the right time, place and event for us, and we found one finally. This weekend they hosted the Reptilian National Expo near Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, and animals being a shared interest of ours we decided to finally meet up.

We'd met the night before the event at a hotel about a half hour from the convention center, since she didn't want to spend a day driving for 6 hours there and back. We had separate beds, which I didn't mind at all. We got to the event the next morning and there were so many snakes, geckos, spiders, almost all of them for sale. They had a few booths that let you handle the animals, and we handled a few snakes. They're a bit cold, but so smooth. I was a little surprised at how much their skin moves to the touch, cause I'd thought they would be more solid and all muscle, but it was so loose. But I enjoyed them, I enjoyed the event, I enjoyed going out with this girl and can't wait to see what it is the two of us can do together next time, hopefully on her side of Atlanta next time.

I wish we could have done more, but it wasn't as big as I'd hoped. Despite that, it has helped show me I can enjoy being with people, and at least one person doesn't mind being with me. If you ever see this, I hope you realise how much you helped relieve some of my anxiety with other people.

Until next time folks. <3