I love reading this sub often, but I honestly never thought I'd be posting here myself

I'm an extremely lonely guy. I grew up as an orphan constantly moving through the foster care system and never had any friends throughout my childhood, whatsoever. I actually didn't speak to anyone outside of school related stuff, and even then not much at all. Seeing horrible things at a young age, constant abuse, severe mental illness, the whole 9 yards, yada yada. So, I have 0 social skills and am extremely awkward

I met this girl at work. Let's call her R (F20). It was my first job, and R was the first person to ever seek me out after work/school to ask about my personal life, as I usually keep to myself. We became friends, R gives me her number, and over time we've talked I've been opening up to her. Very important to the story, I almost never talked to R in person. It was almost always over text, as I am very bad at turning my thoughts into words quickly, as required for speech and such.

So a day before Christmas Eve, she asks me if I would like to come over for dinner with her family. At this point, she had asked me to get coffee or lunch with her sometime on a few occasions, but I had always been too nervous and decline. As someone who had never been to a family gathering, nor a friend's house as child, I was extremely nervous and hesitant at first. But, I was feeling bad for always being afraid and wanted to change for once, so I agreed after some consideration. R promises that her parents are cool

On the way there, she introduces me to her family. She has a younger brother, D (14), her mother, T, and her father M. A mutual co-worker of ours, C, was also invited to apparently make me more comfortable.

We have a great time, well at least they do. All the while I feel very isolated and out of place, but they all do their best to reassure me that I'm welcome, repeating phrases like "we're family" and "this is home"

R's parents are separated, but came together for the occasion. D likes videogames, and C is just that good looking guy that seems to be really close R, though you can't say anything for sure.

The evening activities include listening to Christmas music, smoking weed (everyone except for D), me trying alcohol for the first time (M22), and of course dinner

As everything is winding down and people are getting ready to leave/head to bed, R asks me if I would like to stay the night since everyone was off the next day and had nothing to do. I say why not and she shows me to my room upstairs. She assures my that at any point in the night, I can knock on her door or text her and she would take me home. Once I get to the room, the hidden childlike excitement that I unfortunately never got to experience sprang forth. I began to think about the nagging feeling that was at the back of my mind: How much I had actually missed out on in my childhood. I started thinking about the sleepovers in movies, so I go back down to D and ask him if he wants to play some videogames together. Unfortunately he only has 1 controller so I move on

This is where the FU starts. I begin to think even more about what I missed out on, what I didn't but should have had. I remember back to earlier when they kept calling me "part of the family".

I move to T's room, knocking on the partly opened door before entering. In that moment, I still can't quite explain exactly what I was feeling, but it wasn't anything remotely close to what was communicated. I could go on and on about what I wanted to say, but I realize now that it wasn't much better

I go in and ask her if she would mind if "I came in to hang out....". I pause because I realize she's in the middle of something on Netflix, so I added "later on", which probably made it worse. She gives me this weird look, and suddenly snaps, "as a matter of fact, I would!"

The closest and simplest thing I can use to explain what I meant to say, was "please be my mommy", but obviously I couldn't just say that straight up, so my poor communication skills and my nerves teamed up and came up with something worse. I guess I wanted a close moment with a mother figure I never had and it came out in the worst way possible. I think maybe the substances I consumed earlier helped not keep my mouth shut and bury my feelings like usual, but who knows?

Anyways, I leave feeling disappointed and a bit confused, and head back up to my room. I see T leave her room behind me and quickly start whispering to R. Signal 2 that something wasn't right, but I choose to ignore it and try to sleep. I feel really weird about it and my stomach starts hurting, so I text R and tell her I would like to go home. After a long while of not seeing anyone, C comes up to tell me "the family has plans in the morning", so I couldn't stay and had to leave immediately. R had just told me the opposite, so that was flag 3, but I didn't notice right away because I wanted to leave anyways. (I really didn't, but I have way too much anxiety about using other people restrooms, and was already up to my neck being in someone else's house, so I went over the edge quick).

During the car ride home everyone is quiet and T is nowhere to be seen. Then it all clicks. No. No way that just happened. I have a mental breakdown and quickly start dissociating hard. I'm still having trouble processing what all of this means as I type this.

I tried so, so hard to avoid my crush outside of structured environments to prevent embarrassing myself in front of her. I didn't realize that I was at the time, but I do now. Deep down I knew something bad would happen, because it always does, and I really didn't want my first friend ever R to experience anything bad at my fault. She's way too nice and caring and considerate to deserve that

I'm still currently freaking out because I may have just destroyed the first and probably only relationship that I ever had a chance to have. I never, ever let myself get vulnerable for any reason, but I took a leap of faith because R is so good to me and may have given me hope that I could do so without being hurt, or hurting others myself for that matter

As silly as it sounds, this relationship was my trump card in my "reasons to live" deck. I won't go down that road, but let's just say it's not the kind of deck you want to be drawing from

I can't believe the 1 thing I actually had hope for in my life may have been thrown away so suddenly due to the fuckup I am and always will be

TL;DR

Mentally ill Man-child tricks himself into believing he is a child again, and asks his friend's mom if they could "hang out later" during a sleepover

Also, I apparently have been misunderstanding the definition of "crush". I don't like R in "that" way, I just really like her