I always hear people saying how hard it is to make friends as an adult anyway. How completely impossible is it with nothing to build on? Where am I even meant to start?
I've never set the world alight socially, was always the kid who got called weird, and then I had awful luck as a preteen and 4/5 of my friends moved out of the area in a short space of time. I try not to take it personally. The final friend dumped me literally overnight when she made new friends and I never managed to make any new friends in school.
University, I realised that I have no idea how to socialise and after an agonising freshers week, including a misunderstanding that led my flatmates to believe that I hate all music, I completely withdrew from people.
As an adult, I've done volunteering, clubs and classes and all that but I'm never part of the group. Pre-COVID, I went to the same sports club near enough every week and regularly had people I'd met multiple times introducing themselves to me. Stuff like that happens wherever I go. It's like people never really notice me. I also still get called weird but now it's at work so I've got that going for me 
I'm not unhappy and a lot of the time, I think that I don't even want friends or a relationship, it feels like such hard work when there's this huge, 20 year, gap in my social skills and life experience. Having no social skills and missing out on every teenage and young adult experience that involves people affects everything. I don't think most people understand how it's even possible somebody can come to have no social connections at all over a very long period of time. I can't be the only person in my position but it feels like it sometimes.