This is a... difficult topic. I don't know you and the circumstances you're living in. And English isn't my native language, so it's pretty hard to find the right words to give you any advice (chosing the right words is as important as the advice itself). So... I'll kepp this superficial and just talk a bit about myself.
I was basically born into the role of a loner. When I got into school, I was the new kid in the city. I knew no one. And people there were pretty different from the people of the town I was coming from. I didn't really get why the other kids did what they did, so I did my own thing. I changed school at 3rd grade (we moved). Once again I knew no one. But in that school I made one friend. He was a pretty weird guy. A vegetarian - which back in the days meant he was something like an alien. He often didn't wear any shoes. He had long hair. His mother loved everyone and believed that she can "feel" people. They were... different.
In 3rd and 4th grade, we weren't bullied. We just weren't a part of the others. When we changed to secondary school (5th grade), the bullying started. In the middle of the school year, things happened and me and my mom moved to another city. A new school (once again I knew no one) and a new mentality (it was at the other end of the country and people were different there). The first few days, the other kids were curious. The second week I was the outsider again and the bullying started.
In 7th grade I had to change the school again (Germany has a weird school system in some states, where 5th and 6th grade are some kind of intermediate school before you get into secondary school). I still don't get how this happened, but there was no one in my new class that I knew from the other school. So this was a new chance. Just that I didn't take it. I didn't even try... I just didn't talk to the other kids^^
There was another guy in my class who didn't talk to anyone. Somehow we built something that was close to a friendship. We met after school, developed common hobbies and were happy not to have to act as stupid as others. Realizing that I'm happy NOT to be a part of what others do, was a key moment in my life! Even when it took a bit longer to get this into my skull.
Three and a half years later I got to know another kid from the school. He was one grade below and he was "normal". We became friends and I got an idea what it meant to be part of a group... and I liked it. That point of my life was another key moment (not because of the friends, but because what I did later with these people). I did something very "stupid"... but I managed to make everyone believe that it was smart. I voluntarily repeated 10th grade. Officially, I did this to get a better graduation. In reality I did this to be in the same class as my friends. That year I was a part of the people I found stupid earlier.
Don't take the following as an inspiration!
Together with my first friends (plural) I started doing all kinds of stupid shit. I got drunk, I stole, I screwed girls just because I had the chance (no love or even affection) and eventually I started smoking weed. Weed was probably THE key moment in my life. First it was just fun. Smoking weed with friends, doing stupid things, laughing all the time... I enjoyed it. But later I started to think about stuff when I got high. And I was high all day long. First thing in the morning when I woke up was usually to search for the joint that I didn't get to smoke last night because I was too high and fell asleep xP And all that time I found myself thinking about life, people, how the world works and who I am. I became a loner again. Well, I still had friends and we still had "fun"... But that was just my body and a superficial part of my mind. The real me, went into another direction. I became so much of an outsider, that I even started to look at myself from the outside.
After school I started professional education in a job I wasn't really interested in. I can't remember much of it because I was high all the time and busy with thinking. After a year I quit it. I started taking small jobs and just lived on being high. This went on for another year. Then my mom stepped in. She gave me a choice: Start professional education in another town (away from my friends who had a bad influence on me) or do whatever you want - but then without her support. She didn't know that I wasn't around my old friends that much anymore. Most of the time I was alone in the woods, smoking weed, discussing things with myself. I loved the woods. It was calm and I was alone. I knew the woods well enough to know my ways (off the paths) even at night. I enjoyed being there at the night because I loved the darkness and the different sounds. Looking back at this now, I probably was a pretty creepy dude. I don't know anyone else who feels at home in a forest at night oO
Anyway... My mom gave me that choice. Being the pothead I was, I took the easy route and left home for another round of professional education... My mom only wanted the best for me, but she didn't know that sending me away was just helping me getting even more time alone. I spent three years in a small town in the Alps (some mountains in south Germany, Austria and Switzerland). More nature, more forests, more calm, more loneliness. Three more years of smoking weed and thinking. And three years where I discovered shrooms, hawaiian woodrose and other shit.
I can't remember much of professional education there. It was an endless circle of weed and booze. All I know is that I was always one of the best at school (not just "one of the best", but really one of THE best), but failed the final practial examen. I had no idea what the examinants were talking about and I didn't even care enough to stay sober for a few days to get my shit straight. It wasn't important to me, because in those three years I learned that I didn't want to be a part of this grey world and the sad and depressing 9 to 5 crowd. I couldn't be the employee of someone who I think is stupid. And, sorry, most people are just that. Stupid.
My boss there once told me that I don't work for my free time, but that I have free time to recover for work. He was saying that because after four or five years of constantly being high I looked like a piece of shit. But that phrase... No, that was simply wrong. After all that time living in my own head I learned one thing.
And that's basically all the advice I can give you: You work and you live to be yourself and to be at peace with it. What that means is something you got to figure out on your own. And how to get there is a very individual thing. For me it took more than six years of being high as *
self-censored out of respect for Chandra and Konrad* to figure it out. But being accepted and having friends, isn't important for me to be happy.
I don't do drugs (regularly) anymore (I only smoke a bit of weed every couple of months). I didn't quit them because of anything. It's just that they didn't get me anywhere anymore. I don't need them anymore. I'm at peace with myself. I think I'm even happy. People? I find most people pathetic. Currently there isn't a single human being I'd call a "friend". There are people I know. People I go out with. People who call me a friend. But I don't feel very close to them.
After my failed professional education, I never took a job again. I'm self-employed. My work? I don't really work that much... But there's all kinds of things I do. It changes all the time, because I don't do stuff I don't like. I'm not rich, I'm not poor. I live pretty good, but don't work too long. I could work more and probably get rich, but... no. I have what I need/want. And I think what I do is pretty pointless. I don't get why people "consume" it. I often facepalm myself into coma when I look at how useless my work is. But I know what people want and so I deliver it. Looking at it from the outside (something I still do, even without being high), it's pretty funny.
tl;dr
Ask yourself one question: Do you want to be friends with people you don't like? If you don't know how to talk/be with people you can't find a connection to... Don't connect! You got to find a way to be at peace with yourself and the world. But to achieve that, don't do things you don't want to do. This can't lead to yourself. It'll only send you straight into the sad, grey mass. You'll carry a mask all day long and feel dissatified when you're alone and think about your life. If you're not you, you'll end up being locked up in yourself, living a life you don't want to live. You'll end up unhappy just because you finally got what you thought you wanted.
I get the conflict of wanting to have friends but not wanting to be friends with the people around you. For me, it took six years of heavy drug abuse to solve this. Strangely enough, I had to make friends (after deciding not wanting to be friends with "normal" people) to find my way out of wanting to have friends. And funnily enough, deciding that I'm not made for having friends, allowed me to be more normal around other people.
ps. I don't know why I wrote all that. Normally I don't talk about any of this (even if it is only a small part of my whole, #FCK'd up story). And it probably won't help you at all, since this was my very individual way to find out how to live. Anyway... Hope you'll figure shit out one day. Just know that people can be happy even if their way of being happy is different. Nothing wrong with that, as long as you don't hurt others.
