What It’s Like Being The Social Outcast In College

I didn’t feel this when I was in high school, but now that I am in college, I have been feeling this way a lot more. I have always been that girl that’s just there. Not pretty, not loud, not fun. Introverted, lame, and ugly. I have never had a boyfriend or any guy to actually find me attractive. I’ve seen my best friends go through many boyfriends and many breakups. They’ve experienced the whole teenage love life and are still going through all this. I have been the one to sit home by myself and answer the phone to hear about their fun-filled night. It’s not that I don’t want to go out, I just never get invited to stuff and I don’t have anyone that would be willing to go out with me.

Now that I started college, I have all this freedom to do what I want, whenever I want. Taking advantage of this freedom, I have been going downtown a lot with friends. The same friends from high school and their group of friends. It’s not that I don’t like people and don’t want to make friends, it’s that whomever I meet is always finding my friends more fun to be with. I’ve met so many people randomly around school and it’ll be fun hanging out with them, and then they’ll meet a friend of mine, and my friends seem more fun to be with than me. It’s not the first time this has happened.

So when we’re downtown at a bar, the girls and I would be out having fun and here comes a group of guys. They’ll all come over to my friends and they’ll all be dancing with someone and then there’s me. Alone. As expected. Of course we’re at a bar to have fun, but it’s hard not to notice being the only one that a guy doesn’t want to dance with. “Why does it matter who I meet or who I don’t meet? I don’t need to dance with anyone to have fun,” I tell myself. As soon as I finish that thought, I’ll see the cute guy I see around campus; the one that is best friends with one of my friends. The guy knows me. He knows my name. But he doesn’t see me as just me. He sees me as the girl that’s always hanging around his friends. I don’t stand out to people. I just happen to be always around so therefore, they have no choice but to know me. They think nothing of me.

What I want out of my college experience is to make my own group of friends. A group of friends that I can make plans with. A group of friends that I can hang out with without feeling like I’m intruding in a group.

What I want out from myself is to have a fun and loving personality. To have a guy come up and want to dance with me without feeling obligated to do so because his friends had first dibs on my friends.

What I want from my life is to stand out. I want to be able to leave an impression on someone so they’ll want to see me again. I want to meet someone that will choose me over my friends.

What I want is to feel like I belong. I want to feel like I belong rather than tolerated. I want to find my own group of friends without feeling afraid to lose them to my more exciting and outgoing friends.

Does that make my life sound pathetic?