Hi Craig
I appreciate your courage in sharing your feelings and your pain so honestly. I can only talk from my own experience, but you remind me so much of myself when I was 17. I, too, had heartbreak and yearning for one particular girl, and didn't have a girlfriend at all until I was 19. As you say, the simple things that look so effortless for so many people seemed to be denied to me, and I really couldn't understand why and it hurt like hell.
But here I am now, I'm 50 (though I still find that hard to believe). I have a settled relationship, with the first woman I dated (believe it or not) and three fine sons. I've not really changed - I'm still socially anxious, prone to lashings of self-doubt. I still stress over everyday things and struggle to cope, but my partner accepts me for who I am more than I accept myself. Now, I do love her, but she's not a saint, not an exceptional special person. She's an ordinary woman, and the world is full of ordinary, kind-hearted people like her.
Please, Craig, try and have hope. Close connections with other people can happen in unexpected ways and not always where or how you think they will. None of us are so unique that there is nobody with whom we can truly connect, though I know it can feel that way.
Enough of the preachy 50 year-old stuff. I know when I was 17 I wouldn't have particularly appreciated it from a stranger, and I still wouldn't.
take care
Pete