Hello /r/Buddhism. I have autism/aspergers. I'm socially awkward and it's hard for me to meet new people. My best friend killed himself earlier this year and I've been feeling very lonely and depressed. Can Buddhism help me deal with these feelings?

I'm big into open-source stuff like Linux and open source hardware, computing, reading books about anarchist, left-wing, communist and socialist lit. I also care about animal rights issues. I'm not a vegan or anything, but I am trying to have a more vegetarian diet. None of these I guess are necessarily uncommon, but they do exclude me in the small rural community I live in that tends to be pretty socially conservative. I also have no social media. I don't use Facebook or anything, I refuse to. I'd also like to get rid of my cellphone someday and stick to a landline. All these things kind of seclude me from the general population that doesn't necessarily care about these things in the same way I do. At the same time though, I can't change to fit in, because then I feel like garbage for not being myself. I all around fail at communicating to people as well. I suck at making small talk.

/r/Buddhism Thread Parent