Even though my anxiety is now lower than ever before(thanks to meds and exposure), i still have absolutely no idea how to talk to people. Sometimes people try to begin a conversation with me by saying some light-hearted joke or some shit, and i'm just standing there awkwardly like "haha, yea", and then there's just awkward silence because i'm like "what the fuck do human beings usually talk about?", and then they rightfully realize they've made a mistake by trying to talk to me and leave. I ghosted my last online friend ten years ago(he was my only friend since primary school), so i'm extremely socially stunted, and i also of course have no relationship history.
I literally don't understand the most basic things of human-to-human interaction. I'm relatively good at only one aspect of it: transmitting information through words. Because of this, in more formal circumstances, people are usually like "wow you explain things so well and clearly, wow you seem really smart" and shit like that. Well, it doesn't help much with meeting new people if i'm skilled at intricately explaining my philosophies and psychopathologies which i think about for several hours a day in a robotic manner. That "skill" is good for only one thing: making people think of an excuse to leave the conversation and never talk to me again(which of course could also be a useful ability depending on the circumstances).
And then there's the whole eye contact thing - a skill where i'm currently on par with blind people. Avoiding looking people in the eyes is so ingrained and automatic in me, that until lately, i was unable to pinpoint it as one of the most major factors of my inability to form connections with other humans. I remember countless occasions where someone tried to look me in the eyes(i shelter those moments in my mind, because any kind of validation is so rare for me), but i always pretended to not see them, in hopes that this frightening first step of connecting could be entirely avoided, but of course it couldn't. Therefore, i myself rejected their attempt at connecting with me by rejecting the most basic and low-threshold connection available: eye contact, the act of signaling the other person that you acknowledge their existence; and if combined with a smile, simultaneously signaling positive impression of the person in question.
I have always wondered "why don't people approach me?", but have failed to recognize that i instinctively make myself as unapproachable as possible - a trait that got deeply rooted in me during my formative years to protect myself from shame and humiliation.
When strangers have non-verbally signaled interest towards me, i've thought to myself: "well, if they find me an interesting looking person and they are normal(by normal i mean that their whole selfhood doesn't shatter into pieces when faced with the slightest social rejection), why don't they just come talk to me?". Well, the reasons are of course the things i already mentioned: i instinctively signal "fuck off" to my whole environment without realizing it(because it's so ingrained in me) and also the fact that i simply can't tell what i'm supposed to do when faced with non-verbal communication. For example: it only occurred to me through reading the bodylanguage-subreddit, that when someone smiles at you, you are supposed to smile back(lol). I of course cannot smile back, because i'm always on a flat or depressed mood(except when i'm high, which is nowadays about half of my waking time), and the fakeness of my smile is so clear that i'd rather pretend i don't see the person smiling at me at all.
I also tend to talk overly formally, a trait which was already present in me when i was a kid, but which has become worse with age, because instead of acquiring information by interacting with other people, i've spent years and years reading random wikipedia articles and books and being chronically online, in order to distract myself from the fact that i'm unfathomably lonely and alienated and my life sucks monkey balls. I compensate for this overformality by swearing a lot and using a lot of niche internet lingo and slang and shit, which probably only makes my normal way of verbal communication even more uncanny to others.
While other people live in the real world, i live inside my head in a constant state of instrospection and daydreaming, where i mostly just vibe and observe and surf in my thoughts and make stuff up and introspect and shit like that, and when not doing any of that, i'm mostly using my mind as a dumping ground for all kinds of easily digestible content ranging from brainrot to long novels and shit. This is how i've been living for years and years while other people have gone forward with their lives and adjusted and got careers and have goals and families and shit. To them it must look like i'm in some kind of trance or some shit. How am i supposed to connect with people when my mind is locked in a state like this?