I'm another European hiki. I became one when I was 15-16, but managed to cure it within a year. The year after that was the most amazing I have ever had, made great friends and still hold the grade record for a high school I graduated. Then after failing college with one exam, I went back ... recently I tried starting another college after being a shut in for a year. My parents made me sign up after I had been inside the house for 8 months without ever going out.

I've met many of my online friends in real life. Hell, my girlfriend is someone I've met online. They are some of the only people I don't get the pressuring feeling of impending doom and failure and shun away from, but I can't meet them often enough to maintain a lifestyle where I get out of the house often. I recently dropped out of the second college, and now signing up for something completely different .. I live in a shithole full of unintelligent people, and the friends I did have moved off to university towns by now.

I've never met a person who feels like I do, and even my online friends do not understand the problem when I try explaining it to then ... currently there is nothing wrong with my social skills, actually. Except people people always react so strangely when they are exposed to my "extreme" interest in computers. Or in drawing and graphic design.

...

I wanna change. But I don't even have the money to meet up with people anymore. I just want to move away, because even though they don't understand my problem they still critique my actions.

The life of a hikikomori is clingy and painful.