Hello. I have a "I have no friends, can somebody be my friend" post. I have also had some beers so will probably regret it.
I am a twenty six years old autistic male diagnosed at thirteen. I am from east midlands England. I have learned how to maintain and regulate eye contact, make small talk, take public transport, get over anxiety, et cetera, so I appear normal in public and can hold a conversation for a while but sometimes I manifest very negative autistic behaviour, like meltdowns, oversharing, whatever. I have never had a job or a relationship. I do not tell people I am autistic and honestly rarely think about it.
I went to a few schools but missed most days. I don't have any qualifications other than AQA English and maths. I also went to college. Almost immediately after starting college the staff learned I was autistic and changed to speaking either in a high pitched baby voice mistaking me not talking or making friends for having a severe learning difficulty. On a break I went to a poundland and bought a multipack of matches. Apparently somebody saw me buying them and reported it as if I was about to commit arson. I felt insulted so I stopped going. I only remember having a single conversation from the entire time I was there, which was probably two to three months. This was in 2017 but it's a good example of what education was like.
I have spent three years teaching myself web development multiple hours a day (go, vue, react, typescript, postgres, mongodb, et cetera) and applied to jobs for over a year, eventually I gave up and started applying to warehouse and factory jobs instead since they are supposed to be easy to get, I haven't got a reply from anywhere.
I have two long time friends but one is in another country for seven months and the other has moved into a house with his other friends and wont speak to me anymore, I rarely meet either of them anyway. I try not to obsess over my situation because I know it can always get a lot worse but I have been depressed for a very long time and getting much more depressed in the last few years, I know I am depressed because for years I have been having morbid dreams, been feeling terrible, developed a fear of aging and I think about suicide sometimes but would never do it. And some other things have happened. I mostly stopped coding but I have had a few random hobbies, like now I am smelting metal and planning on doing investment casting with aluminium bronze
I want to meet people who are non judgemental and I'm able to have a conversation with but when I look up autism meetup groups for adults it is always for the parents of children
