StbGuy ~ I'm coming back to your original title: "How do I look past continuous rejection and keep trying?"

I guarantee you that nobody ~ not one single person ~ you're just meeting out there for the first time has a clue of a "sense", whether extra, spare or otherwise out there, about you! If you go up to somebody with a smile and an outheld hand & they reject you before they even have a chance to know you, it's they who are abnormal, not you! You've got a wrong outlook on it from the beginning.

Why do you assume that all these people are "normal" anyway? No, maybe there aren't that many people like us, but still they all have their own problems and that includes of the mental variety. This may sound judgmental, and I am an "old" Nana after all, but young man, I guess I've earned the years to say from experience that you're simply hanging out at the wrong places for meeting the right kind of people. It may be as simple as that. DarknessIsMyFriend was right when he wrote "It sucks that people are so cruel in this messed up world." But the fact is, they are. Not all of them, but too many.

As a young person with undiagnosed ADHD, Asperger's, depression and PTSD to boot, I went around thinking everybody else had it all together and the way they treated me reflected reality. Now I know better. I acted weird because I was messed up and I was messed up because I had these "things" going on & had been abused my entire life, which led to thinking I was even more weird and acting more weird and more abuse and cruelty and on went the wretched circle. At some point is really is up to us to say "enough". You don't have to accept their opinion of you as reality, and for that matter, you don't need those kinds of people in your life anyway!

I agree with other answers you've received here. Like about the bars. I think there are probably a majority of folks going there to escape their own pain and it's not going to fundamentally be a place to find healthy support anyway.I hope you'll get and take some good advice for finding better places to find companionship.

But no matter what, it breaks my heart to see you write things about yourself the way you have. I, too, would gladly hang out with you anytime (although like retiredlibrarian, I'm pretty old, but I do have many young friends whom I know would love to meet you!) I hope it might help a bit to hear that I have been where you are in life, and know, know, know that you are worth knowing, worth liking, worth loving and worth having for a friend!

Please hang in there, keep seeking with hope, keep knowing there are good people out there for you to know. It really isn't as hard as finding a needle in a haystack at all. It's more like finding other rocks that match up with you, but you've been looking in a haystack for them. You need to go look in the rock quarry instead, that's all. (I know, kind of a lame analogy, but it's all that came to mind at the moment.)

God bless your day, my dear one.