Go to therapy, they said. It would be fun, they said

As the title suggests, i went to my first group session a few days ago. It wasn't absolute hell, but i still felt like i survived rather than attended. I expected a room of awkward, plucky teenagers like myself, ready to make friends and infodump about video games and convential nerd/aspie stuff. I really gotta start lowering my standards. I can't give a precise picture of what i first saw, but i'll try. As soon as i walked in and plunked myself down on the nearest (albeit tacky pleather) couch, i was approached by some dude i had never seen before. I couldn't tell if he was old enough to be out of college, but i knew he was much older than me. He insisted on shaking my hand a few times as he introduced himself and gave gratoutious complements on my dress, it creeped me out a bit but i played along. As he tried to make small talk like we were old friends, i glanced around in hopes of finding anyone my age. On the couch across from me sat what looked like a drug dealer (his weird baseball cap and patterned sports sweater gave that impression, at least) a pudgy dude in a track suit, and a nervous angsty emo teenager (his knockoff emohawk was edgy but so wrong) who i could tell didn't want to be here. At the table in front of us, a few 40-60 year olds were stationed, and i panicked as i realized that they weren't the parents of these misfits. They were in the group too. And of course, there was the obligatory neckbeard nerd. You already know enough from that description, so I'm not going to say too much about him. As the time came to introduce ourselves, my heart sank. All of the older adults were pretty normal, except for the lady for knitted coat hanger covers and "knows the lord." The druggie dude was a godzilla obsessee, the emo tried to play himself off as too cool for us with his phone and his anime, but really he was just cringy. Tracksuit dude robotically yelled at us to do an online kickstarter so we could get more people in the group (i only had 15 cents and was surrounded by enough weirdness already) and neckbeard dude......did neckbeard dude things. Sometimes the world amazes me. I was currently the sanest one in the room (if you know anything about me that's a valid reason to be alarmed.) But as the famous last words go, things got weirder. As soon as i mentioned that i was missing my prom this year (i'll save that lament for another post) flirty dude implied he would totally date me. Cue the "oh god no" meme from the office. No. No no no no no. He's old enough to be my teacher, and i'm not that desperate yet, so i quickly shut him down. We talked about the events we were going to do, and at least those were pretty cool, if i could somehow dissassociate myself from this band of misfits. I seemed to be the only one with a true sense of humor, which really gets you far these days. However, there were a few moments that weren't completely weird. I managed to have a conversation with track suit dude about anime (we actually have a lot of the same tastes, how delightful.Not.) it was great until druggie dude made it about godzilla as everything in his strange little brain seems to be. Then emo dude tried to tell us how superior he was because he watched pokemon. At least i had my fifteen seconds of fame/sanity. As i left to go home, i could tell my mum was creeped out. When we first got there, it was only tracksuit dude throwing around -what i thought was- a bath bomb and an angry lady at the front door. I'm still creeped out, but a variety of offline and online experiences has made me immune to any weirdness. As dysfunctional as this group was, i don't think i can leave. There doesn't seem to be anywhere for kids for my age, and anywhere else is just aba that teaches social skills. If nothing else, i can learn to cope. Maybe knitting lady will make us some coat-hanger covers in the process.