Quite afraid of partying, dating, drinking, and sex. How am I going to go through life and be respected?
I am 20F and have been friendless since 2018. I am a virgin and have never partied or dated anyone. Before 2018, I had plenty of friends in elementary school but then was suddenly transferred one day in 6th grade to a different school by my mom with absolutely zero warning. I made friends with students there, and then we went to the same middle school after that, but in 8th grade, I started growing distant from my friends and didn't want to hang out with them anymore, just ghosting them, no longer interacting even though I'd see them at lunch sometimes.
The best explanation I can provide is that my mom habitually has never liked my friends, always interrogating their existence out of me or watching who I hang out with after school when she came to pick me up, and insisting that we separate because she always thinks they're a bad influence. I knew for a long time that she was paranoid about the school district being evil and trying to ruin me and her lives and mental health (which also why I had been transferred), but for some reason, I just always obeyed everything she told me despite heavily objecting often. The closest thing I had to friends at that time were acquaintances.
Then the pandemic happened and I became even more separated from everyone else and became happier and more comfortable with being alone all the time. When high school came back and I attended sophomore year, I was only at that high school for one more year before transferring to a different one for junior and senior. And I still made no effort to make friends or socialize at all. Ever since the pandemic, every kid around me seemed repulsive to me. I didn't like how they dressed and how they were swearing all the time and didn't think they would want me to be their friend either, so this continued.
Then I went to college and completed two years without friends again, only forming something akin to friendships in my second year by joining a student club and getting a partner "buddy", and also briefly being friends with a roommate who then moved out in 2 weeks or less. I lived in a building where all the sorority girls were and everything about them just rubbed me the wrong way, from how they all were these blonde white girls with tans and botox that dressed scampily and talked way too loud, too often. In the first year, there were parties down the street but I wasn't interested in joining them at all except for one time on Halloween, but I wasn't even ready for my first party because I wasn't able to stay up late and my costume had never arrived. But now I was starting to get curious about what all the rage was about and I asked online to learn about what college parties are like and if I'm missing out on them.
I didn't really know what parties were exactly back then, I just thought it was friends hanging out at a bar or each other's house having a chat and a drink. I didn't know that the main point was getting extremely drunk, experimenting with illegal drugs, and sleeping around with strangers. Not having friends during my teen years or going to any social gatherings before, both because I didn't want to and because my mom was strict and hated all my friends, led to me learning everything in one huge shocking moment that opened a Pandora's box of all sorts of anxieties and questions.
I wasn't really thinking it'd be that before before I learned all this and now it's all become so intimidating, especially with how people who are even normally nice so quickly turn to bully or treat you like an outcast for saying you're not into partying or don't drink. What completely baffles me is why society is accepting of differences and not everyone liking something, even glorifying being different, until you say this.
I dread the idea of binge drinking until I puke, pass out or black out, getting a hangover, waking up on the floor in some random place, doing something horrible or stupid you would've never done sober. I don't get why people talk about this like it wasn't absolutely humiliating, and even have an air of pride about it. The idea that everyone is just completely unafraid of experimenting with drugs completely shocks me...weren't we all raised with emphatic teaching about how dangerous drugs are? And that's about the only knowledge we have of them? Then how and why do many people just ignore all of that just to rebel against their parents and blindly believe everything they say is wrong or think they're invincible and that you absolutely should, even if you shouldn't?
And I can't stand the idea of having sex with strangers. I already don't feel sexual attraction to people I don't already know well, and the idea of throwing myself into an environment that I've learned often has violent, pushy, gropey, rude people coercing you into dangerous things and only wanting to roof-dive or race their car when they're in the worst condition to is unbearable. If I show up, I have to drink until I can't make any good decisions anymore and I have to end up in some man's bed at the end of the night. People drink and that leads to them doing stupid and degrading things, and I feel like it's also that people drink so they'll be fine with stupid or degrading things happening. I cannot say yes to going into these places. And yet everyone insists that you have to do this every weekend, every day if you can, be as reckless and extreme as possible, and that this is the peak of being a young adult and that you'll have never lived if you don't do this.
I admit I learned all of these things off of media and some personal stories online. They don't represent reality accurately, but I can't help be afraid. I don't think I can control how I'll behave while I'm drunk by setting rules when I'm sober. I can't always fight against peer pressure to ride with a drunk driver. I can't control that I will frequently have to put up with random men catcalling or being forceful to me.
I don't think I have a choice. I have to just be okay with all this bullshit of dealing with assholes, creeps, gross and dangerous situations, and keep coming back anyway, every time. I have to go party and give up my safety, dignity, and personal boundaries as much as the people around me want me to or else I get bullied and treated like an outcast. That, or I can sit all day in my bedroom, surfing on my computer and sleeping, completely alone, which may be no better, for as long as the world stays the same. If I had just had friends throughout middle school, high school, and college, and been able to make new ones without a problem, maybe I wouldn't be so afraid to be an adult and vibe with what everyone else is vibing with, and just be a happy, normal person without such an insane problem to deal with.
TL;DR: I have never been to a party, had sex, or dated. My mom kept pulling me away from my friends until I gave up resisting in middle school, I'm in college now and still don't have true friends, and the pressure of becoming an adult and doing adult social life things (sex, parties, dating) is growing on me despite me really not wanting to do any of those things. How can I just get over it or make the fear subside?