Getting severely bullied over 10 years ago has completely changed my personality, and now I don’t know how to make friends in college without the anxiety of it.

TL;DR: I am a 21F nursing student struggling heavily with being shy and introverted. Severe, daily school bullying years ago completely changed my personality from outgoing to closed-off. Now, I’m terrified of being "clingy" or embarrassed again, and it’s keeping me from turning casual college interactions into real friendships. Just really needed to get this heavy weight off my chest.

I will try to keep this short and brief. But this post might get a bit long. I 21 F started nursing school this fall. I meet and see a lot of people every day and it is getting easier to recognize them. But my issue is that I struggle with making friends. Let us go back in time. From 2015-2017, I was bullied in school every day. I was not as shy as I am now. I was much more outgoing. When I see my classmates, I would give them a friendly hug to greet them. But once the bullying started, I stopped. I would get called ugly, trashify (a rewarding of my real name), and was told nobody likes me. I had problems with touching kids because I was a hugger and thought that I was being friendly (it goes deeper than that, but this post would be too long if I described everything). I got bullied every day. There was this one kid who made it his life mission to make me miserable. He would call me names and kick me. (again, will not go into detail with it because it would make the post too long). I hated going to school. So, once I started high school I changed. I became more introverted and shy.

I interacted with my classmates and such but did not get close enough to them to be called friends. I tried once by asking a classmate which was a boy I liked if he wanted to be friends with me. A classmate standing nearby overhead this and gave me a disgusted look and asked why I would ask that. I replied that I did not know if the boy wanted to be friends with me. She gave me another disgusting look, so I went quiet. The boy did not answer either. I left the room so fast when that happened. I noticed over time that her and the boy grew closer and I was angry at that. I ended up avoiding them both for the rest of the year.

During sophomore year I reconnected with a classmate from middle school. Let us call him E. We would work together on assignments for chemistry together and help each other out in general. We were best friends in junior year since we had English together, and we worked together a lot. I liked him too but did not want to ruin my friendship with him so I never told him. We lost contact in senior year because we did not have classes together and our schedules were different. We tried to meet up for lunch, but it did not always work. I have not spoken to him since last year. He goes to a different college than I do. I also clicked with this girl in senior year lets call her Jordan. She was nice and we shared the same interests. I linked up with her during homecoming and during my senior prom and we had so much fun. We lost contact after senior year though.

I met this girl, let us call her Ava in senior year too. She was nice to me and we spoke a lot. She introduced me to her friends, and I thought I found my friend group at last. Boy was I wrong. I would hang around them a lot after school. Then she sent a text message to me a few weeks later saying I was too clingy. I cannot remember what I replied with, but I remember feeling disappointed and slightly heartbroken that I did not find my friend group. I also avoided them for the rest of the year after that.

I have not gotten close enough to anyone to call them friends. I do not know how to do it without scaring them off and repeating high school. I do not want to be embarrassed again. There is this one girl who ill call Jesse. Unless I am in class, usually alone. I was sitting alone at lunch when Jesse approached me. We had just taken a test a few days prior, so she asked me about it. Then she invited me to sit with her friends. I was hesitant too, but I said yes. I have been hanging around her and her friend for a bit, and it has been nice so far. But I keep my distance because I do not know if we are friends or not and I do not want to come off as ‘clingy” like I was told in the past. I see her I chat with her, but after we do, sometimes I feel like was being clingy because when I see her I automatically want to chat with her. I don’t want to be called clingy or have her thinking “why is she here” or misinterpret her social cues. So I try not to always talk to her when I see her.

Now that I am in nursing school, it has been one of my goals to make friends, but I do not know how. With me being shy, it is not easy. Especially since everyone has their own friend group already. Like I would see people leave and arrive together in groups. Or I would hear people be like “oh I’m going to meet up with so and so, or you are going to his/her house tonight, right?” I think it’s  because they had prerequisites before and knew each other from previous courses they took together. But I am new to the university where I go to nursing school. Ive always dreamed even from high school to have that friend group. Where we would get to each other’s houses, study together, talk about anything we wanted. We would go to the mall or places together and have fun.

Unfortunately, that is not my reality.
I do not get nervous when talking to my classmates per se, but I do not want to come off as a dork or rude, or weird, or clingy. I think my anxiety (not officially diagnosed) has gotten worse with this because nursing school is a school for a profession. This is schooling to determine my career. I am stuck with these people until I graduate. And I do not want to ruin that experience for them. I want to have friends or be the person who invites out to eat or to study together. But of course, they do not know me like that, and I am too scared to put myself out there. I am not a party person either. Ive never been to party and just thinking about it makes me nervous and scared. Like I’d be excited to meet new people but I also feel like it would be overwhelming at times.
I recently took the Mental Health America Social Anxiety test, and it turns out that based on my responses I have moderate social anxiety. Looking back, I can see why. I know it is not an official diagnosis, but it helped me to see where I stand with this. I saw online that its not normal to not have friends at my age. I want to fix it.  

I am sorry this was a long post, but I needed to get this out there. I was going to put this in AI but have been taking a break from ChatGPT (I was using it every day) so I decided to post it here.

Thank you for taking the time to read and reply to this post.

I really need a reality check here—am I overreacting to my current situation, or is my past trauma blowing it out of proportion? Please drop a comment if you've been through this.