Seeking support for loneliness

Hello all,

This past year has been a tough year, as I've lost a number of friends. A number of them were from a group I helped bring together a couple years ago; they have bonded more with each other based on interests and professions, and I gradually was feeling exhausted spending time with them because I couldn't relate to them and felt like I had to work harder to connect with them and they did with each other. I also have become more distant with my two best friends from college; one just generally not writing with as much and her not initiating, the other having embraced a unhealthy way of life that I couldn't find myself to support. Overall, I think these were all natural passings of friendships as lives change or as you realize that you don't relate to those friends, but I've still been grieving and will ask whether I wasn't enough of a friend. I have spent most of this year ruminating about the losses, maybe hopeful things would turn around.

With these loss of friendships, I have been becoming aware of how few connections I do have. I've noticed myself becoming sensitive when I'm with friends who talk about how the childhood or college friends they have, as recently as this weekend when a couple friends did so and I began to feel depressed. With the few friends I'll meet up with once in a while, I feel like a secondary friend because they have other groups they will hang out with more regularly.

I am thinking of ways and initiating trying to go to groups to make new friends, but I am discouraged. It's happened often to me where I find a group of friends, and within a couple of years the group fades and everyone else falls back on their friends they've had for a while or find new friends, and I'm left still living in the past of once was. I feel as though while other people have a base of friends and are branching out, I am looking for that base and feel like I have a greater need for connection than others.

I am trying to look up, but sometimes it does get very hard. I was curious to hear from people who maybe have been in similar situations, who have lost a number of friends in a short span, and in a way have to start over. I haven't felt comfortable or vulnerable enough to share this with the friends I have, and the close friends I once had that I used to share these thoughts with are no longer around.