are your 20's supposed to be gut-wrenching lonely?

hi, my name's Eva, i'm gonna be 21 in a couple of months and i think i never had any real friends before, but as i entered my 20's this problem started feeling even sharper.

in one and a half years i'm gonna graduate university. by this age even if you haven't had any friends graduating high school, with a probability of at least 90% you're gonna make at least one friend by attending the same lectures, events, living in one dorm etc. i didn't have an opportunity of socializing in university like that because we've been studying online ever since we enrolled. everyone else has been socializing online, texting each other, meeting up and hanging out, but not me - and i understand it's a 'me' problem, i'm a closed off person mostly & have a hard time getting myself to text someone who i don't really know like that first, so nobody ever asked me to hang out (and i didn't impose myself either).
to be fair, this changed a little in the last year because i started texting people, establishing at least surface level relationships and it became easier, but still no really deep connections and friendships.

i think i'm not the only person in the world who feels like that, but it does feel isolating and lonely when you see everyone else getting along just fine; it makes you wonder if something is wrong with you. it makes you feel like a loser who hasn't figured out this one easy thing that everyone else did.

and i want to say that it's not something you or i do wrong & it's everyone else who don't see our swag and aura, but, there's one important question we have to ask ourselves - how can they see that we want to be included and talk if all we do is sit quietly and wait until someone comes to pick us up?

that's not how it works in the real world and that's the truth i had to learn the hard way. my dad tried to tell me that when i was younger (shoutout to him lol) but i was (and still am tbh) super stubborn and always wanted things to be my way. so yes, the easy truth is that you have to go out into the world to be seen. that's it. mindblowing.

when you feel lonely - reach out to someone. make some plans, ask them about some minor thing, make small talk - i never really understood why people waste their words and time on saying something that doesn't have any real meaning, but they serve a purpose - the next time you'll want to talk to somebody you will have some 'hooks' to help you start a conversation, you will feel less awkward and it helps building surface level relationships.
and before having some meaningful connections you'll have to pass the shallow level, that's something i never learned too - because almost all the people i talked to were either on the internet or someone i knew from childhood. and when you build a relationship with somebody on the internet, if you click with each other, you tend to dive into them really fast without really having a stage when you are mere acquintances - before you know it, you are spending 6 hrs on a discord call and having late-night convos about your childhood traumas until 3 am. or maybe it's just me because i probably have bpd lol. either way, the way you build relationships with people on the internet is different and most of the time is not applicable to real life, so of course when most of your socializing was online you can't really figure out why it doesn't work the same way irl. and if someone can relate to this, just know - you're not broken or anything. socializing is a skill that has to be learned & developed over time as any other. you're not a 'lost cause', it's just that other people have started gaining this experience earlier. but you can start at any time - there's no right or wrong time.

the other problem is that i feel like right now many people around me are not in it for making deep lasting connections - nobody wants to hear about your problems or comfort you, they have a lot on their plate as they do and only want other people in their life to unwind from their own problems. i only have a couple of friends i talk to occasionally (besides my mom & my bf) and i don't even think we have that strong of a friendship, so calling them friends feels kind of a reach. some people i have fallen out with and still mourn the connection we had, but i realize we don't really have anything in common anymore and i need to move on, but yk how that goes. and making new friends is hard, because most of the time people have their established list of close friends and don't really look to expand that circle. so you're either left with people you can only turn to when you want to have fun or no one at all.

so to answer the question from the title - i think that me personally, i'm not gonna find any real good friends until i'm over 25 and i have made peace with that. i've been praying for a stable friend group since i was 15-16 and it never came, so i've lately started to realize that i just don't have the skills required to have that friend group and i need more time to build them. and maybe a different contingent. so if you're younger and struggle with making friends i hope i have planted a seed of hope in you that will sprout and give you new strengths, if you're older - please share your experience in the comments ^_-