Finding friends who understand you in a new place is definitely gonna suck for a while. Though, I will note, you phrased the lack of social skills in the past tense. You've almost certainly grown as a person (and gotten more experience making friends) since the last time you had to go through this. I think that difference is probably bigger than you yet realize. I don't know if you meant cringe when you said that your past lack of social skills bugs you to this day, but if so, that's pretty common. Just means that you've become better.
Iron lung seems like a particularly apt metaphor. Necessary, but limiting. I don't think the emotional struggles are all their fault, but I will say: parents giving the rest of the family issues is a tale as old as time. IMO, a big part of it is that your family sees you as more or less one continuous person since you were young. And quite frankly, I don't think people fundamentally are the same person in a lot of ways (just going by my own experience, by the time I was in high school, I had basically no memory of life in elementary school). But the relationship you have with your family is difficult to shift, so them being closer than you would like nowadays (or even blatant boundary issues) is almost expected.
If you want to change it, the "how" there is a judgement only you can make. If you think you can just explain how you feel clearly to your family and they'll understand it, then I think that would probably be the healthiest route to go down. There's also the classic rebellious teenager trope; I guess that's an option. (I went with the "turn into an isolated online weirdo and hide the computer usage from your family" route, and just got lucky that I went the way of tumblr, media piracy, and weird fanfiction rather than the really messed up corners of the internet.)
As for "For a kid that's been so many places I have never really seen the world in a sense." I feel like that could be a whole post on its own. I think you're absolutely right in that going to a bunch of places, trying the food, etc is cool, but it will often feel superficial. If you want to feel like you're getting wiser to the world, I think the best way to do that is to seek out people or stories different from your own perspective in fundamental ways. If we're talking stories it's going to most often be the stories that make you feel sad or weird or just something that you can't really explain. If you're talking people, it's going to be those who you don't expect to be friends with. Some of the most interesting conversations I've had have been with people at bus stops (be they friendly drug dealers or sweet old ladies who encourage my husband and I to commit acts of public indecency and then confess to being an accessory to multiple murders). But also some people who were in similar social circumstances, who I just overlooked because I thought they were shallow or that we were too different to have even a conversation.