I’m a 23 year old male; I’ve never really been very outgoing or good at making friends. I have struggled with anxiety for most of my life, to the point where I can’t really smile or laugh around people. I can’t eat in front of people, and I struggle with leaving the house a lot of times.

At the same time I’m a good person, I know it sounds egotistical to say, but I think I’m very kind and if someone needs me I’ll always be there. At college I always ask people how they are, I’m relatively comfortable around them, but not close. I have a dry sense of humour and always try to make people laugh.

Recently because of a really bad patch I was going through I had to turn my phone off. Some I talked to about how I was feeling in detail before hand, others I didn’t. But when I turned my phone on six weeks later, I saw no one had asked me how I was doing, no one. It wasn’t even a case of telling people I’d turned off my phone because I did it suddenly. Again today at Christmas no one sent me a message, no one called.

I’d suspected for a while that some of these people weren’t really there for me, but after six weeks to have nothing, it was heartbreaking. I don’t feel sorry for myself, but when I think of that it makes me really sad.

It’s the thought that I really could be dead, and people wouldn’t even know. What does this say about me, that at 23 I have no one who really cares about me. Christmas is meant to be a time to be around the people you love, and I’m alone. I don’t know how this will change.

Should I just give up on people altogether and concentrate on trying to follow my goals? How can I keep letting people into my life when it leaves me feeling like this? I felt better when my phone was off, I really thought when I turned it on I would see a message from some of these people, and I would know they cared.