Issues making friends

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Hello!
I have Asperger's syndrome, and have always found that it is extremely difficult to make/maintain friendships with other people, especially neurotypicals. Going to school can be difficult at times. I've lived in the same small community for about eleven years, and despite the fact that I've known them for so long, I've never really fit in. I've tried to initiate- I asked one to hang out, and call me if they were able to.. but I guess they 'forgot', because I never got a call/text. It's been that same kind of pattern for a while now. It doesn't help that I may be one of the only people in the area with AS.
Anyone else have the same issue? What would you suggest?

You aren't a part of the social structure or hierarchy, you are different from them. It is going to be difficult at that age, sometimes finding a common sport or activity that you must attend on a regular basis can definitely help because you have a mutual interest.

At that age, many people are susceptible and impressionable to peer pressure and fitting in with the crowd. Even if you fit in one day, it would be a never ending battle to keep up that appearance..the best bet is to find people that will take the time to truly understand you.

Thanks, Nocturnus!

You are welcome, I understand what it is like to be on the outside, to be and feel different from everyone else..

Sometimes you have be who you are because other people aren't worth compromising for if they do not accept who you truly are..

Sometimes it is better to be free than to join a masquerade of hypocrisy..

I can't seem to get my age to show on my profile, but I'm 26 now so school is well behind me. I attended 5 schools and I always had that problem in all of them.

Secondary school was the best because I was there for 5 years, 4 of those years I was basically invisible (when I wasn't being picked on), but by the final year people started talking to me and I actually had a good time. Maybe my classmates finally realised that I was going to keep hanging around them anyway, so they might as well speak to me.

It wasn't that I had no personality, I definitely had personality, everyone knew my name, they just never understood me. I resorted to self-deprecating humor a lot just to make people laugh, people would come up to me to see my latest gag, but it never made me any friends.

Being an adult hasn't made things any easier either, I still spend most of my time lost in my own inner world, and it just gets harder to relate to people the more life experiences I miss out on. But I have learned a lot about how to interact with people in a more normal way. I used to get called weird a lot and I thought people were just cruel, but now I realise I really was acting differently to how most other people act.

I've also been told that I'm missing out on too much. It scares me and bothers me because I don't know what to do.
Sometimes I meet people and think hey, here's someone I like, but the possibility of a friendship seems so far-reaching even when I get the sense they like me, too. I joined a rowing club and stuck around long enough to get a sense for the people I like and dislike, which is new to me. My self esteem took a beating growing up and I never knew what it meant to self-determine the people I like, I always thought nobody liked me. How do I not let the threat of rejection of rule the Rest of my life?

I just feel making friends is impossible because everyone's just waiting for me to make one tiny slip up or mistake so they can call the whole friendship off. Seems to happen every time.

I understand, I've been on both sides of this calling a friendship off thing but it's usually after a sequence of things that bother me or that I've done that I've tried or not tried to address.

The problem is that there are all these silly little social rules that many people make up these days. If you break one of their made up rules, they look at you like you're mad.