Was I raised right and if so, why I am I so lonely?

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IM 25 AND WHAT IS THIS? Or rather, where was the village to raise me?

How can I get the sort of interesting, friends-and-relationships experience so many of the people on this forum my age describe? It seems like I’m in the same boat as the people who weren’t diagnosed until they were in middle age because all the supports just dropped out for me at puberty.

I know this is long but I really really need feedback because I am at a crossroads and in a serious quarter-life crisis.

As look back on my longest-lasting job at 4 months now and ponder grad school for next fall (first application done yay!), I feel a great emptiness inside of me and feel like I might not have been raised with the right stuff because there was only one saint of a woman, my mother who had me at 40, who I've lived with my whole life, who goes on Medicare this month, taking most of the load. HOW CAN I EVER HAVE A LIFE WHEN THE ONLY CONSTANT IN MY LIFE WAS HERSELF ABANDONED?

Some background first:

I had no siblings, my Mom was estranged from her family (possible AS traits and certain depression, though the latter is probably more because of the rejection by them than the cause), and my Dad was too busy with his job at Boston University Paris overseas study to see me except on weekends or in the summer even when I was in France with him (which stopped when I was seven and the schools in the western wine country where he owned a property were failing to handle me properly). We lived in the Chicago suburbs where I got diagnosed AS, tried mainstream primary for a semester, and made two friends who ditched me in middle school at the same time as the alternative behavior issue primary school failed to pan out in seventh grade and Tourette's was questionably added by a psychiatrist when that co-morbidity was fashionable (12 or so). New Trier on the north shore of Chicago wouldn't take me there and my Mom got scared (sorry about the Fresh Prince reference , just wanted to lighten this sad tale), so she kind of assumed I would just live as a dependent ret*d my whole life and moved to some countryside property next to redneck drug dealers in Galena, at the northwest corner of Illinois, mainly because it had an orchard which she thought was the only way to get me exercise and was only a block from a sheltered workshop where I could do piecework my whole adult life.

My grandpa moved in with us in Galena (he lived in Iowa with her estranged relatives), but he was getting senile and moved out eventually when my mom wouldn’t let him gamble away his meager money on sweepstakes scams. The local high school accepted me after my Mom thought they never would and referred me to a great therapist, but all the mainstream inclusion in the world couldn’t replace the “special kid” image from my occasional trips to the underequipped resource room (I think they called it the “ret*d room”) and the locals were very xenophobic and not afraid to be crude about it. Every group of people I sat at lunch with rejected me over some BS or just got too bored, and it never led to a real social life outside of school. My Mom was dragged through the mud by neighbors that wanted to buy the property on the cheap and mucked up the environs with their truck collection and unsightly building projects, eventually leading to her getting arrested for stopping in an illegal spot they usually parked in during a house party next door, beaten and then accused of resisting arrest in a dubious key-scratching “battery” charge, and railroaded to what eventually became a plea that it took years to expunge despite faulty evidence because no lawyer would come through tens of thousands later. Thus soured on the community, I had to just deal as a change of principal led to the new boss “agreeing” with my quiz bowl team's slimy coach to have everyone with band conflicts go to band instead (which I wasn’t in) rather than letting them do both. Nobody told me, I only found out when I left school as the bullying and exclusion mounted my second semester of junior year. Ultimately, there were some silver linings but the community hated my mother so much it may have rubbed off on me and just saw me as a tard no matter what I guess. Nobody from high school keeps in touch, even my teammates and drama club friends, and none asked me if everything was OK while I took AP classes online in what would have been my senior year. No “real” sports, no dates, no hanging out outside of school, everything had to be arranged by the parents like it was f*****g grade school.

I went to college in Dubuque, a Catholic school with two-thirds women where I already failed to fit in at orientation, and immediately pissed an unattractive God Squad girl off by being clingy about wanting her to introduce me to people and accusing her publicly of being an attention whore on Facebook in an unrelated complaint about a group I thought was using fascist iconography. Things snowballed, I was whispered of and my reputation ruined as a freshman, and ultimately ordered to not have contact with her while everyone else could impugn me at will. My friendships all were either shallow or ended by petty misunderstandings, transfer to other schools by the other party, or both, at that level, and I went on one lunch date in toto that represents my entire dating career (and all intimacy save for one goofy basement dry hump in sixth grade when my parents were talking with hers upstairs). I majored in Spanish because I needed a degree and it was the only language I had the chance to soak up in high school, not because I had any passion or direction in life, and minored in history, which gives me f**k all chance of a career without the education courses I stayed away from to avoid having to interact with the age of people that made my life miserable. At and after my graduation, no peers congratulated me and it sank like a stone. Ultimately, nobody stayed in touch, again unless I prodded or they saw my birthday on Facebook (if so only then), and I was left in a rental again (the Galena house was foreclosed and sold at a loss) struggling to make ends meet as I combed the classifieds for jobs I mostly hated and was selective about because I didn’t want to be clumsy and humiliate myself working retail or food service. It’s pretty much all been phone banks that have let me past the interview, except for one bad experience online teaching English to Spanish-speakers from home, and the work schedule stresses me out though it’s all my sh***y résumé and B.A. will get me other than McJobs.

Eight years with no social life and now I’m supposed to make it in the adult world with one summer job my freshman year (make-work as an office gopher at the very workshop I was originally expected to work in as a factory hand with the Down Syndrome folk), no internships, and no network to fall back on in Dubuque, Iowa, where everybody knows everybody and Catholicism (which neither of my parents profess) is king? If just one person outside of my family and the occasional teacher had really stepped up, or my Dad could have been there, or I’d had a sibling, or the extended family hadn’t been douchebags, if I didn’t always have to be the forced loner in the community with the depressed (and occasionally suicidal) Mom who never got the help she needed to get me off on the right foot, would I have a life instead of a ten-year gap between childhood and adulthood now?

Without the "right experiences," I'm at a loss to explain the below and don't want to make dumb mistakes, so please give me advice.

Today at work, as I adjust to the second week of a part-time schedule to help deal with stress and grad-school prep and come home to chat with a lovely lady from England on WP who I flirt with like I’m the most confident guy in the world and not a douche with a terrible batting average on Match and Chemistry and a 0 on OkCupid, I had to deal with another situation I don’t know how to handle because my experiences are so vastly different from 98% of human beings. A really nice girl who I never saw as the most compatible or friendly person necessarily (she refused two Facebook friend requests in the past) has for the last few weeks gotten warmer. Don’t think we necessarily have much in common, but the 20-year-old has a warm voice and a cuddly chubbiness that I find endearing (I gave up on size zeros in high school and never got the grand reception from classical goddesses that I expected ). She’s listed as “on a relationship” on her FB, which she let me add her on yesterday night with a big smiley when I identified myself clearly as the guy from work and told her “I can has Facebook add plz?” in LOLcat fashion, but it doesn’t say WITH WHOM, which I see as kind of Facebook code for “it’s not all that serious really.” Unlike some other situations I discussed on “Love and Dating,” this isn’t just like one interaction. She’s actively initiated conversation on multiple occasions, and the last two days appeared to make a point out of waving to me and smiling the way I heard girls often do when flirting (she did that as well last Friday, so it’s effectively every day I’ve been working with her this week even though I haven’t necessarily showered her with conversation). Only trouble is (or perhaps a boon since it avoids my current workplace’s frowning on intra-office dating) that she may be leaving for a job as a Subway front-end manager by Christmas. I’ve moved to be in the “center row” instead of my old outsider cubicle row that emptied out late in my 11-7 shift, and the interactions only warm up, so what do I do to keep this from fizzling out even as a friendship like everything else? A happily engaged girl still keeps in touch though she barely lasted out a month out of training, so maybe I shouldn’t panic, but I don’t want to lose a good thing and like the way Subway girl makes me feel (as far as I know I never saw her there, though I haven't been at the location much and it's pretty new, and I certainly don't want to be creepy Subway stalker dude every time I hanker for cheap but healthy food). She was tagged on a post where I came out as Aspie, btw, to some other co-workers, though I don't know if she actually read it.

I know long posts get lost in the shuffle sometimes, but honestly, I do not have this huge network to give me advice IRL. You guys are pretty much it. I sometimes wonder if I wouldn't do better in GirlsAskGuys, which as an Aspie boggles my mind, but I'm giving this another shot because your feedback is honest and forthright.

BTW, Subway girl talked with another girl around me (Subway's still leaving her hanging so I don't know if I'll be free of work rules soon) about her boyfriend in a negative way, is this a pattern to avoid or what I don't know. In any case, the other girl, another late shifter friend who opened up to me at length with me about her own struggles with substance abuse and family problems but does in fact have a steady fiancée (my impression is), may or may not have left a carving saying "[Name] heart u" on my keyboard (it's one I remember plugging in and taking directly from my old spot). I never noticed it until now, so maybe it's marking territory lol because she knows Subway girl is flirtin. Women huh?

^ sorry man, I wish I could offer advice, but you know, most people on here are socially deficient, so your situation sounds too complex for me to give an advice.

I hope you find a way to get a life you want for yourself. Not sure if this will help or not, but just in case it has something useful: http://www.wikihow.com/Meet-New-People- ... ing-Creepy

I thought that's what people posted in the Haven for! Please point some of the more adept people here if you think they could do more.

Also, is there something "creepy" about what I posted above that I'd done or the observations I've made? I just say that from the title. I read the Wikihow link just now (second or third time in a while), and I'd say I'm getting better with a lot of it, though I find people don't talk very readily where I live so it's hard to break the ice in the first place. Confident body posture can only go so far when someone's already got their "talk friends" nailed down and there's no help.

I've had some great convos today, and I'm looking forward to more, and at least four people have given some indication of wanting to come to my birthday get-together (all work associates--well one former co-worker I keep in touch with--that I've known for 1 to 3 months). I'm making progress, but I just am wondering if there's any way to speed things up a bit or if people have experiences I can learn from. Even if people are "socially deficient," they may have taken bigger risks than me and know some of the pitfalls I might face when I move on to more challenging situations. I'm going out to a bar to watch a band, very few are "officially" going on FB and it seems pretty obscure, but that only makes me cooler . Hope to hear more advice soon.

I appreciate your posting here, Leafplant. You're at least trying to be helpful, and that means a lot to me, and it also builds the reply count so the post doesn't get buried in the usual emergencies here. I know there are people in much worse situations and I don't want to be callous towards them by putting my musings in their midst, but I think it's something a lot of people on here might find interesting to read about just in its own right, even if it's not something they relate to personally.

The bar was kind of a bust socially and I felt too drained for another, but I seemed to have a pretty good grasp on my stamina for that sort of thing and bailed after a decent but pretty weird half hour. One nice convo with a barhop, prompted by the texting of acquaintances I did in an effort to look "normal" somewhere I knew nobody and didn't know how to behave without ready wingmen. Some guys were decent, the few women were attached to family and friends save for one couple. Overstimulating in the band's performance space and I couldn't hear myself talk there, but I had my Sprite (I drove alone so no designated drivers for me) and toughed it out on the stools long enough to feel like I wasn't a quitter.

I'm growing up a little slowly but I want WrongPlanet to be a part of that growth, because the more I get to know them the more I feel like some, either due to age or more socially stimulating lives, have had experiences I could learn from. I just wish they'd be more generous about it, because I really do want to listen even when I seem a bit too defensive.

Also, Leafplant, even if you can't give specific advice about my life in general, do you have any advice on the Subway girl situation? I'm definitely not a "stranger" at this point, since we've been co-workers for a while. I only call her that to avoid naming names on this forum since I am on a first-name basis. Is it kosher by the rules of "Love and Dating" if I repost what I put up in the last paragraph of my initial post there? I got some flak for talking about other girls at work there, just general "don't s**t where you eat" boilerplate that didn't really give me much insight into the general flirting truths I was trying to figure out in this one particular social context. People kind of assumed I preferred interacting with women at work instead of the truth that it's the only place I interact with them face to face. I'm trying to find other contexts but I'm kind of the stranger everywhere else and have to work twice as hard. I think the situation I describe is different though, so I'd like to try but I want to make sure I won't get banned for copy-pasting my own text.