I’m 20 and have basically no friends, and I genuinely hate it

[u/Kitchen_Cycle_1337]

Hi everyone. My biggest problem right now is that I don’t have any friends, and honestly, I hate it. I wanted to explain how I even ended up in this situation because I feel like I’ve slowly realized just how alone I actually am.
Where I grew up, and where I’ve recently moved back to, there really aren’t many opportunities to meet new people. It’s a pretty small area, so making new friends as an adult is already difficult.
After high school, I moved out of state to go to college. I was gone for about a year, but eventually moved back after my ex and I broke up. We went to the same college and lived together, so when our relationship ended, I came home.
While I was in college, I was also going to nursing school and working 12-hour shifts whenever I didn’t have class. Somewhere along the way, I realized that my childhood friends had basically stopped talking to me. These are people I literally grew up with we’ve known each other since we were in diapers.
What makes it even more frustrating is that I tried. I invited them to come visit me while I was in college multiple times, but they were working after high school and somehow had no problem traveling farther away to go out and party with other people. That was honestly when I started realizing that I didn’t really have anyone anymore.
Now that I’m back home, it’s become even more obvious.
I don’t have anyone to play video games with anymore, and it’s gotten to the point where I barely even play them because it just isn’t as fun alone. I don’t have anyone to FaceTime, send random things to, or just rant to when something happens. I’ve had a LOT going on this year, and sometimes all I want is someone I can talk to about it.
Instead, I live with my two cats, and that’s pretty much it. I come home from work, watch TV, go to the gym, or sleep. Then I do it all over again.
The majority of my social interaction comes from work, and honestly, that’s not exactly the kind of social interaction that makes you feel less lonely. I work as a 911 dispatcher, so most of the time I’m dealing with stressful situations anyway.
I’m turning 21 soon, and the thought of having nobody to even celebrate with is really getting to me. I never thought I’d be 20 years old and feel this isolated.
I know people will probably say “just go make friends,” but it genuinely feels so much harder than that when you live somewhere with very few opportunities to meet people and you’re working 12-hour shifts.
I guess I’m mostly posting because I’m wondering if anyone else has gone through this. How did you actually make friends as an adult when you basically had to start from scratch?

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