I [23M] was extremely socially isolated as a child and now trying to be a normal person feels awkward

So to get it out of the way, my parents were absolute nutjobs who should not have been given the opportunity to have kids at any point. I was kept inside the house with no access to anyone else but my parents until I was old enough to attend elementary school (where I grew up it isn't mandatory to send your kid to preschool or kindergarten) and even then I had very minimal interaction with my parents. Most days my mother just turned on the TV in my room and periodically let me out for food and bathroom breaks. Sometimes I wonder why CPS didn't do anything, but my parents were fairly wealthy and nobody probably even suspected that they were neglecting their kid. Even when I finally got old enough for school, I was specifically instructed not to make any friends or talk to anyone except when the teacher asked me a question during class, and I was young enough to just go along with it without asking why. By middle school it was obvious that there was a huge rift between me and pretty much every other kid in school; I wasn't able to relate to things they talked about, I didn't have any friends, I couldn't even understand any of the slang they used. It might be worth mentioning that the school I attended had a bit of a bullying problem, and being the "weird one" I was very quickly sought out as a target. In high school my parents pulled me out of school again to be "homeschooled," except there were no study plans or any sort of structure, so I ended up sitting around doing nothing for years. Again I was not allowed to leave the house or get a job, and I didn't really object to this because I was miserable all the time and had started to feel anxious and scared around people. My parents further encouraged me to feel this way, saying that they were the only people who ever cared about me and that everyone else would only hurt or use me. For the longest time, I couldn't even look at anyone's face directly because I was just so scared of everyone.

When I was 20 I met my boyfriend purely through chance. He was a cashier (I was allowed to go out for groceries) and always helped me check out, and one day he handed me a piece of paper with his number on it telling me "I might get fired for this." Texting him that night might have been the best decision of my life. He showed me that not everyone was out to get me like my parents had claimed, and that I could have a life outside just sitting in my room. I had so many meltdowns in public because at first even ordering food was terrifying to me, but he had the patience of a saint and held my hand through everything. I got my GED and started going to a few community college classes, and when my parents tried to stop me I left and moved in with my boyfriend. He introduced me to his family, who welcomed me in without hesitation, sat me down for the first home cooked thanksgiving dinner I've ever had, and all held me when I broke down crying. Soon after that he encouraged me to look into therapy, where I was diagnosed with depression and pretty bad social anxiety. A year of therapy and medication later, I felt I was confident enough to get a job, which is what I did. It's a retail job that's actually pretty laid back with lots of very nice regular customers, and even though sometimes I get overwhelmed everyone is extremely understanding and I'm genuinely happy when I'm at work. I feel like for the first time in my life, I actually have friends and people who genuinely show that they care about me.

My problem is that I've been isolated from social situations so long that everything just feels so awkward and out of place when I try to socialize with everyone. 90% of my knowledge of how people talk and act comes from TV shows and books, not experience, and this apparently shows because sometimes I'll have customers or friends who will ask me if I'm from Los Angeles or hollywood etc because I talk "like people on TV." They also sometimes point out that I use words that normal people don't use in conversations, or that my mannerisms look like I'm acting out a character instead of just being myself. And I completely understand what they're talking about, because sometimes I'll look at myself in the mirror and feel like I don't have a personality that I developed over time through interacting with others. I just sat at home and watched TV and scrapped together bits and pieces of TV show character quirks until it started mimicking a personality. It makes me feel like I'm a fraud, or like I don't even know who I am. It's even worse because when people point them out they never do so from a malicious place, and some people including my coworkers and my boyfriend have mentioned that while it's sad how it happened, to them my quirks and slight awkwardness are endearing. When I try too hard to act like a "normal person" they'll call me out and tell me I don't have to try so hard and that I'm fine the way I am, but I keep feeling like I'm not fine and I'm just living a big lie.

Has anyone else ever felt like they didn't get to socialize enough as a kid and now everything just feels awkward and wrong? How can I stop feeling this way and actually develop a personality of my own? I feel like the relationships I have with my boyfriend and my coworkers are great and I love them all so very much, but I'm always so worried that one day they'll realize just how weird and awkward I'm being. I'm also worried that dealing with me might be exhausting for them, because they'd have to deal with all my anxiety issues and weird mannerisms when they could just very easily be friends with someone else who doesn't act like a cheap imitation of a TV show. How should I move forward regarding not wearing out these people I love? I desperately want to show them how much their company means to me and that I'd very gladly risk my life for them after how they took me in and treated me with such patience and compassion, but it's so hard to say all that because I'm so afraid it'll just end up sounding like some cheesy TV dialogue and nobody will take it seriously.

tl;dr my parents kept me socially isolated all the way up to high school. I met my very supportive boyfriend and finally pulled myself together, but I feel like I come off as fake or awkward because I learned everything about social interaction through TV and not through experience.

Submitted October 28, 2018 at 05:04PM by throwaway50393 https://ift.tt/2OVc08u