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When he was young, it was easy.
All he had to do was find that one group of other children who would tolerate him for the school year, and that would be it. They would play games together, tell stories, have sleepovers…
...Even if he usually felt like he stood a bit too far out of the group, at least he still had a group to stand out of.
He never lived around much other children, and the only other kid around his age was his own brother. When school was out, he could rely on having another friend around.
But then his brother stopped wearing stripes, and started getting more annoyed with him any time he tried to play like they used to. He had his own friends to hang out with, now, and he had a lot of them. It would be embarrassing to be out of stripes and still playing hide and seek with his babybones brother.
...Which was just fine. He could respect that! He had his own friends for the year, anyway, and if they forgot his name sometimes, well, that wasn’t their fault! He just had to keep reminding them!
When he lost his own stripes, though, he noticed that it became much harder to find that group. What used to be at least six monsters shrunk down to four, to three, to two. He managed to keep one group for over two years, and he let his hopes rise just a bit too much before that group disbanded as well.
He didn’t want to talk to strangers anymore. Not when they would glance at him out of the corner of their eye whenever he said something, and certainly not when they leaned over to their friend to whisper something else he couldn’t hear.
He didn’t always see it, when they did that. But he knew they did. Even when they thought they were being sneaky, he knew.
It certainly didn’t get better with age. Even as he walked down the streets of Snowdin, greeting anyone who passed by with a grin large enough to make some kind of impact, he felt that they wouldn’t be able to name him if someone asked. Not like anyone would, anyhow.
He had been ecstatic when the Captain of the Royal Guard agreed to train him. He had thought, if only for a second, that if he acted right, he might be able to befriend her. He only realized he had been playing the wrong persona when she brought out the noodles.
When he had met a tiny flower, someone incapable of judgement no matter what mask he donned, he had thought someone finally understood. He decided that he was wrong when his arm was snapped in half and that same flower tried to hurt everyone.
The human was a strange case, but they disappeared after the barrier fell, so he chose not to think of them. They had better things to do.
He knew it was irrational. He knew that most of this was more than likely nothing personal.
But, fuck, did it hurt.