I'm posting this because I feel like this is the reason I've ended up in this particular digital ghetto

As a child I spent a lot of time imagining having friends and doing things with them. I felt like a spectator cut off from the world of sociality - only capable of watching the interactions of others, a passive figure in the margins of other lives. As I got older I became able to humanise myself and was adopted into various groups, in late school and at university, and I expected that the way I felt would change: I would no longer be atomised.

But I felt just as disconnected as before, except now whilst surrounded by a whirl of people and things which felt hollow and distant. The dissonance between doing things that were supposed to be fun and not enjoying them, with people who felt like strangers, ate at me and made me mad and depressed. I couldn't maintain the 'friends' lifestyle and I moved away and faded out of all their lives, until there were none left.

I'm not totally alone - I have a dear lover and some family and a dull office job. I like my coworkers. I sometimes feel that I should contact my old friends, or make some effort to make new ones, but it feels like an awful imposition and a chore. I'm in the prime of my life and have no particular attachments like children so I think I should be cultivating a full life, with friends, but on a basal level people repel me; I can't seem to feel comfortable around them.

Would it be a mistake to carry on in this way? Is there a way to learn to enjoy having fun?

post in the comments your best guess as to what mental illness I have