Bit of Advice Needed:

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Thanks for all the advice, you guys! And that has to be the best reason to use public bathrooms ever.

And I'm gonna share, real quick, what my childhood was like:
I was one of about ten white kids in my grade school. I didn't talk 'til four years old, and when I did I had a major speech defect. Literally unintelligible. I went to speech therapy from preschool to fifth grade, when we moved out of the country. That put me in little plastic chairs between a few people with a small verbal tic, and a majority that were mentally challenged. Not all that great for my self-esteem, them doing better than me and actually managing to "pass" therapy while I never did.
I also was writing right-handed instead of left-handed. This led to my writing being illegible. Until Sophomore year of high school. I also had ADD and didn't realize that until grade 10 as well.
Oh, and I really saying this, but everyone at my school was really fucking stupid.

So... yeah. I was the odd man out of any group, being the sole fat white (and asthmatic. Thank forest fires and pollution for that bit) guy in my class. Who couldn't finish their math sheet. Because that also happened, and everyone seems to think only math takes intelligence. So my classmates and I viewed each viewed the other as being idiots.

So I separated myself and read. It sounds a bit schizo of me, but I read to keep the voices quiet. The voices of doubt, insecurity, the thoughts I had that maybe I was like the others in my speech class.
I didn't make any more friends after... well... second grade, if I remember correctly. I sat on my fat ass and read. I didn't get better until summer after freshman year.

And I had realized something that summer. I realized I wanted to be a pastor. The church I had been going to was a fucking Broadway show. I was baptized at something like age eight, but I didn't actually have Jesus until summer after eighth grade.
But... yeah. There was a youth pastor, he took us to a church camp that he had always gone to (he met his wife there too) and I paid attention and read the Bible. The Bible is the only book that actually brings me joy to read. Everything else just reminds me of grade school. But, all the adults in my life think I enjoy reading. They keep reminding me of back then, and they don't understand when I tell them, they just keep talking about books.

Anyways, I was a loner until pretty much last year, but the hardest thing has been talking to people. Most of them have had what I call normal childhoods. Childhoods where they talked to people, gained social skills and learned how to handle others. Closest I'd gotten to that was being an observer.
I mean, talking is pretty instinctual with most people. You don't even think about it. But I run everything in my head through before talking to someone, unless I'm joking. If I'm joking I'll just say the first thing to come out. The way my brain is wired, that thing is funny 95% of the time. But I can't be comfortable if the group I'm in is larger than five or six. Especially if I don't know one or two of them very well. Talking I'm not comfortable doing in a group larger than about three. And three is a stretch (these numbers are including myself, by the way).

Ah, but I dunno. It wasn't that hard of a childhood, but... that's it. I've done nothing else. There's maybe one thing I haven't said, and that's that I go to a church youth group, and that's the only place I can feel comfortable in a group. It's because of the mission trips, you can't sleep in the same house, same room, and building houses with them without feeling a kinship with them.

But... yeah. That's the thing about my life that depresses me, I guess. That it can be laid out in a forum in pretty fine detail.


But yeah, I do need to just suck it up and do something. Really, what I've been doing is trying to be sociable with people I know. It's really hard to do so sometimes, but... yeah, I dunno. I'm missing something, I guess it could easily be confidence.