Another thing I should mention about high school: Hardly any girls were into me (in fact, no girl I expressed interest in during high school or middle school reciprocated the feeling).
And it wasn't a simple matter of "No, you're not my type." It was more along the lines of "Ew, no, you're the freak of the school."
I remember this one girl in particular I was into during my freshman year of high school. Her female friends would leave her comments on MySpace that pretty much said "He's into you? That sucks."
Man that would be a blow to anyone's self esteem. I'm sorry that you had to go thru that. From a social standpoint I was pretty cringe in middle school, especially due to how my ADHD (and the side effects of ADHD medications) affected me back then. Looking back on my middle school experiences I can relate to the feeling of being a social outcast, though people didn't express their thoughts about me as openly as what happened to you as a teenager. In my case people were weirdly artificially nice to me when dealing with me face to face, but I could tell I was being spoken ill of behind my back.
Conversely my high school years were good to me socially except for dating. I played in a band, had a good number of friends, went to parties, smoked weed, played sports, all the stuff that teenagers stereotypically experience. However I never came close to dating in high school. For some reason back then I was absolutely convinced that girls didn't want anything to do with me despite the fact that I was reasonably attractive and semi-popular. I suspect due to the fact that since I had been the weird kid in middle school and had trouble fitting in during my early teenage years, that I still had some kind of lingering self esteem issues stemming from that.
But later in my life I realized that there
were in fact girls who liked me when I was in high school, and I was too oblivious and too fearful of my advances potentially failing to even do anything. There's one example that really sticks out in my mind. During my junior year there was this one particular girl who for this era in my life actually would have been a good match for me, and my friends kept telling me that they had a strong feeling that she was into me and that I should start chatting her up and eventually ask her out. I was indeed attracted to her and I trusted the judgment of my friends, but I psyched myself out of doing anything because I had so much self-doubt.
This girl even came to the very first gig of the band I was in at the time, and now that I think about it I get the impression that she was there to see
me. After the show would have been a very good opportunity to talk to her, and things would have gone from there, but I never chatted her up that time or any other time. As far as I can remember I don't think I ever had a one-on-one conversation with her. Then a couple months later she started going out with this one guy who was a complete square and far less cool than me. When I found out about that I was so mad, and to this day I still see it as arguably my biggest women-related blunder. I completely brought it on myself, all because I was so inept that I did nothing to actually even try with this girl. That's the most maddening part, that I could have very easily succeeded and I defeated myself and never took any action. Even as I write this I still feel angry at myself about it.
It seems like in our high school years we had the opposite problems. You at least tried and expressed interest in girls you liked, but I kept everything pent up inside and never did anything to actually engage them in any meaningful way. Although no girls reciprocated your interest, at least you had the courage to do something. I can't say the same thing about my situation back then, I was an oblivious coward when it came to girls and I never took any decisive action.