And, should I change?
I'm 38 years old, single, not interested in starting a family (my mother was a drama queen and I couldn't live that again with a partner or a child), don't own any property, not really a consumerist person, I max my 401k and save 70% of my net income because most of the stuff society tells me to buy is irrelevant to me (I still own clothes I bought 20 years ago and they still fit me), don't need a car and use a bike or public transportation, I prefer to cook at home because it's cheaper and I can choose what I cook. I stopped drinking alcohol 10 years ago. I'm definitively not an extrovert.
I majored in philosophy because I liked it and I still do, but never found a job with my major. I tried being a high school teacher, but teenagers are way too much for me. Nursing, what I do now, is a versatile and safer job, even if I think it's slowly killing me.
I feel cheated in life.
For 15 years I lived paycheck to paycheck paying off my debt, often having to move due to increased rent so this might be my way of coping with trauma. I still feel I'm way behind most people my age. I feel like a loser because I imagine them knowing better than me what they want in life.
It's true that comparison is the thief of joy, but I cannot stop ruminating about this.
If you read my post history you'll realize I don't really care about my job, but stay because I need a paycheck and I like having a big rainy day fund. If I was a millionaire, I'd stop working. I don't like any job.
It might be true that I'm autistic, because close human connections where never that important to me and most people I work with are not close to me, but as I'm nearing 40 I'm starting to think if my destiny is going to be to live and die alone in a nursing home. Sometimes this scares me, but I always go back to my apathetic, indifferent self, like I'm on some kind of drug that makes me not feel anything, neither good or bad, like my emotional brain is underdeveloped.
What I don't want to be is this desperate loner craving for any kind of human attention turning to post his whole life online hoping a good Samaritan comes and saves me. First because it's pathetic and secondly because that's never a good foundation to build a friendship, I'd be inviting a predator, another crazy loner, a newborn Christian to save me with god, somebody trying to scam me with a MLM scheme or an antivaxer into my life. And I'm not a 20 year old discovering the world, I'm almost 40.
Every woman I've been attracted to has ignored me and every woman that showed an interest in me wasn't good enough to me: she could be eager to make a connection, put an interest, even pretty and genuine but I cannot fake being in love or feeling attraction. I always ended up considering them as friends or acquaintances. I'm too old and too introverted (autistic?) to visit a club and try to impress a woman to go out with me.
I don't think this is depression, depression would be me not going to work not even calling in sick.
It seems clear I need a friend, but I don't know how to make friends anymore. I focused so much on surviving that I stopped caring about anyone else.
it depends a lot on your character, but humans don't necessarily need friends. friends have pros and cons. however, if you are convinced you need a friend: you make them by doing activities, helping each other out or having similar interests. for example, you could learn how to sail or canoe or join a knitting or pottery course. Talk to the other participants. Find out a few things that don't make them uncomfortable talking about. Then afterwards, you linger a bit and try to find someone to go to a bar (you don't need to drink alcohol; it's just for bonding), karaoke or dance in a club. On another day, ask them to go bowling or go to tge cinema and talk about the movie afterwards. There is something in human nature, that if person A helps person B with a small thing, person A will start feeling a bond. So, let them buy you a cola or bring them a funny hat or so to start mutual bonding.