I regret my exchange abroad because it made me so lonely it made me sick
(This is a rewrite of my previous post that was deleted. I have modified this to remove what I suspect was the offending language but want to emphasise that I am NOT at any risk of danger in terms of my mental state - sorry if the original post gave that impression)
Apologies if this is long. I am a 22 year old British woman who is a student in the UK and who just finished an exchange year in France. I honestly think it has been the worst year of my life for a myriad of reasons - one of them being how extremely lonely it has been.
I genuinely have not made a single new friend. I will take some responsibility for this - my studies have been so intensive and demanding that I have not found a lot of time for socialising (so ESN events and the like were not really options). I should point out that this is not a typical exchange year in that I am here to obtain a licence (undergraduate degree) so my studies have been way more intense than a typical exchange student's. I did try apps but will admit that I was not as proactive with them as I should have been which no doubt will not have helped me. I have met up with some other expats (by this I mean foreigners living in the area temporarily as I am) but due to their temporary status the friendships have never been able to last long.
I do speak French (certified B2) but I'm quite heavily accented and tend to get nervous speaking French in front of others which can sometimes lead me to make grammatical mistakes. Because of this many people don't want to socialise with me (sometimes people will give up the conversation the second I make a mistake). Because of this, I have had basically no opportunity to socialise in french. Not only has my French not improved at all, I'd even go as far as to say it has regressed because the only conversations I'm having now are with service employees. I honestly don't remember the last time I had a conversation here where I wasn't buying something or talking about uni work. I don't remember the last time I hugged anyone. I don't remember the last time anyone showed any interest in getting to know me even on a surface level.
Last week I was at a party with the three other british exchange students who I did this with. It was at the house where two of them lived. One of their roommates had her friends over. They were hugely interested in the others and asked them loads of questions. They did not acknowledge me even once even though I did try and participate in the conversation. They wanted to know everything about them but did not even ask me my name. At risk of sounding overly sensitive, I left early because I felt so humiliated and invisible.
I do feel the odds were stacked against me in many ways. I live alone in a student accommodation as renting privately with roommates wasn't really an affordable option, so that has not been conducive to socialising. My classmates have zero interest in me, even though I have tried. I obviously can't be 100% sure if it's true, but a classmate once suggested that some people in the class talk about me badly behind my back. I can't say that I would be shocked if that's true.
Back in the UK, I have two very close friends from high school (although one recently moved far away so I'm not likely to be able to see her for a while). I did have other friends, but we were not very close, so while we did socialise, they were not people I would say I knew on a deep level. I have never been in anything remotely resembling a relationship, never even kissed anyone on the lips, in fact (never mind anything further), and this is a huge source of insecurity for me as I'm almost 23 and people expect more of me.
I wouldn't have said that I was 'lonely' beforehand necessarily, but I was hoping to expand my social life and push myself into becoming more 'socially seasoned.' I often struggled with the feeling of being 'in the background.' Now I just feel completely invisible. I am so, so lonely that I (irrationally) don't see any motivation to even try to remedy it anymore. The human brain is not wired to handle this absence of social interaction that I experience, and it has had a huge toll on my mental health, as you might expect. I genuinely feel as though I have wasted the 22nd year of my life. The loneliness of this past year has taken a huge toll on me. I often start crying randomly at the thought of it. I constantly wonder if I'm ever going to have a close friend beyond those that I have now, or if I will ever be in a romantic relationship, because if I couldn't do it this year, I don't know how I could ever.
I genuinely don't know what to do with myself anymore. Classes have finished and I'm waiting on my final results. I leave in late June so there's not really any point in trying to make friends right now. I do try and occupy myself (travelling, learning things online, working out very often etc.) but it doesn't fill the gaps. I guess I'm not really looking for advice, just need to vent because I don't realistically have anyone I can vent to.