You’re welcome. I’m glad that people are getting something out of it.
I still have “OMG everyone hates me” thoughts. Especially at school, where the friend I go with has made two pretty good friends in our class and I don’t fit in the way she does. I just try to talk to myself constructively during those fits. “I’m here to kick ass and get my license, not to make a bunch of friends.” “I’m a worthwhile person whether these particular people recognize that or not.” and so on. I’ve also coped by becoming a bit of a loner. Social acceptance is definitely NOT the motivator for me it once was. That was a conscious decision on my part.
As far as awkwardness around those old friends, my dysfunction was bad enough that I don’t have any of those left. I can think of two friends I have had since high school, and they both had lost touch with me when I was at my worst. I’m not sure I would still be friends with them otherwise. The friend who broke into my Straight Dope account because she wanted to date my ex and so was looking for a friendship breaker and I (that’s awkward) are friends now. We didn’t speak for YEARS. She dated the ex, got the shit beat out of her by him and then moved out of state. When she moved back here to be with her current boyfriend, she contacted me and with four years and motherhood and stable relationships separating us and the drama, we reconnected. She looks after my kids sometimes while I am at school and is very much calmed down herself.
My husband is very involved in the competitive gaming circuit around here, so I run into my ex’s friends every so often, the ones who only know me as the beer throwing lunatic. I just act like I always would even though it feels very strange and a little anxiety inducing. Only one ever said anything to me, mostly along the lines that I was much more grounded nowadays. I just smiled and told him I was working on it.
It’s been a relief to me that people can be so forgiving. 
I’m not sure I understand the question. Clues that I was crazy? Not really. I thought of my behavior as mostly normal, because most of my female friends were a lot like me. When those friendships blew up into pointless nastiness, they would scream at me that I was crazy, but so were they. It didn’t mean anything to me.
Here’s a story that sort of illustrates why my behavior fell through the cracks for so long. I was involved with this guy. I “loved” him, but he would never call himself my boyfriend, which shattered my little 19 year old ego. So I chased him shamelessly, cried, talked about him incessantly, and created all kinds of problems between my roommate and I (the roommate was male and in love with me, but that’s a WHOLE nother story.). Anyway, when he and I finally called it quits for good, my best friend at the time immediately started dating him and called my mother to tell her about it. She and I subsequently engaged in a six month long distant war, where we attempted to undermine the others’ status amongst our mutual friends. Then one day she showed up at my door begging for forgiveness. He treated her terribly and then broke up with her, and she now realized how awful she had been to me. So, utilizing my amazingly great decision making skills, I let her in and we preceded to get insanely drunk. She then proposes the idea that I should hide in the back of her car, we should go over to his house, she’ll tell him she has a surprise for him in the car, she’ll bring him out, and I’ll jump out of the car and we’ll yell at him for making us HURT!! sob Once again utilizing my great decision making skills, I agreed. We went over there, and the whole thing surprisingly, went off without a hitch. This either speaks to our superior planning skills or his dim wit. Anyway, we were having our confrontation when he looked at me and said “It doesn’t surprise me that you went along with this, but I know it had to be her idea, she’s…she’s just fucking…” and then he started circling his finger around his ear. So basically, for a long time, I just looked comparatively sane next to the ridiculous company I kept at the time.
So until my life completely fell apart and I lost EVERYTHING, No. There weren’t really a whole lot of clues. I think this is mostly due to the factor I described above and the fact that this is mainly how my mother behaved growing up.
