Hello Cups

Hey everyone. Not really sure if this is the right place to post this, but here goes...

I've had social anxiety for as long as I can remember. Earlier in my life it wasn't such a big problem, as I was born and raised in a very small town, the kind where everyone knows everyone, and you very rarely have to deal with actual strangers. But about ten years ago, when I moved away to a bigger town to study, I really started to have major issues with anxiety.

So far I've started university twice, and failed as many times. Same story on both occasions: no idea how to make new friends, feeling (and acting) more and more awkward around classmates each day, the usual physical anxiety symptoms, desperately trying to act "normal", eventually panic attacks and inability to force myself to go to class any longer.

These failures in turn have left me seriously depressed, and anxiety together with depression has basically made me a hermit. I've isolated myself socially from everyone, including my oldest childhood friends. I still see those people about twice a year, but it's just no longer the same. Sometimes I even feel the kind of anxiety that only used to happen around strangers starting to creep in when I see them. There's one friend I miss especially, but I don't know what to do about it at this point. Obviously I should have talked to her years ago about what's going on, but I don't think I have any right to unload all this crap on her now, having pushed her away myself over the years.

After dropping out of uni for the second time about five years ago, I've been making a living with what must be the dullest and most menial job in history, stuffing sertraline down my throat, going through the days on autopilot in a kind of a zombie mode, and just killing time watching tv, playing video games or something else equally meaningless. Every night when I go to sleep I have this feeling of having completely wasted another day of my life, and that feeling keeps getting worse with time.

I know I really need to start trying to make something sensible out of my life, just not sure what or how. Scared of trying and failing again, I don't know if I could cope any more if I ended up making things even worse.

Not sure if any of this makes sense, or why I'm even posting this to be honest. Just felt like getting this out of my system, I guess...