r/LifeAdvice

I'm 19, I live with my parents in the middle of nowhere. They never let me learn how to drive, and I can't get a job to get my own car because there's literally nowhere to work within walking distance. They don't buy groceries for me since I turned 18 and I'm not allowed to eat the food that they buy. I had a couple thousand from family inheritance but I've already blown through half of it Doordashing myself a meal every few days to keep myself afloat. I feel so stupid for being this helpless as an adult but they literally handicapped me in every way possible. I literally cannot leave since we live so rurally, and I would have nowhere to go after leaving. What am I even supposed to do at this point :( I'm so sad all the time because of the way they speak to me and treat me. I'm always hungry and tired. I took a few online community college courses with my money but I want to save it for food instead. Idk what I even expect anyone here to tell me. I guess i just want someone to know how alone and sad i feel

I created a new instagram, and I decided to look at my ex wife’s profile. Nothing posted for a few years, but some pictures of our kids, her new one, and her new husband.

It has been 6 years since our divorce finalized. We don’t speak, I don’t see my children, I think about her everyday.

When I start arguments in the shower, it’s her name I’m using. When I’m trying to motivate myself, it’s her voice that haunts me. I feel so sick when I think of all the ways we were awful to one another. The amount of red flags between us; we were kids having kids. We never communicated either.

I don’t think I love her anymore, or really ever did. Nor do I think she ever loved me. I’m just waiting for the day my children come to see how much of a failure I am and have been since I left.

I have a hole inside my chest that I can’t fill. A pit in my stomach that threatens to swallow the ends of my world. I am sad.

How do I stop feeling this way?

EDIT: To answer some questions, I live in a separate state. And I don’t have any rights to see them. I didn’t know the depth of the choice I was making at the time. I was driving 8 hours one way for court and visits and I was already spread so thin. I took the way out. I hate myself for it.

Since I got out a nasty sexually abusive relationship with my ex I constantly need validation on sexual stuff. I can’t help it; I spend my nights talking to men online sending to them then blocking them a couple hours later when I gain awareness. It’s became a cycle any tips

As now many people face layoff and hard to find job. But enter entrepreneurship is tough. That’s why i am community and platform to help everyone who face career uncertainty to enter entrepreneurship with less uncertain, less risk and lost.

Everything run well for first few months, now i have a community of people interests and support me on what I am doing. And I am grateful because i feel this is the passion project of my life.

Howver last 3 week my tech co-founder quit and leave a financial mess on me.

Now I am stuck due to financial. I need around 10k usd to clean some debt, and also can continue building the product because many users are waiting to use my product.

Can you help to give some advice what should i do?

I've reached an age where I am too old to properly start a family, and pretty much everything I've ever done in my life has had that goal in mind to varying degrees; I really just don't know what I'm supposed to do with the rest of my life now, I don't wanna get old anymore, every year that passes will break my heart a little more.

I really just don't know how to cope with the fact that I wasted my youth the way I did, I don't know how to handle the consequences.

A truly sad and defeated part of me wants to just go have random hookups hoping I somehow get someone pregnant and they for some reason decide to keep it, and I'm in some way present; that's a pretty unethical stretch of luck that will only serve as a punishment to my potential offspring.

I’m going to give some vulnerable and honest context, please be gentle.

Due to circumstances both in and out of my control, the last two years of my life have both been miserable and left me feeling both entirely exhausted, angry, confused, and empty. It’s such a mass exodus that I’m struggling to grasp everything that’s happened.

I’ve survived and left a abusive relationship while navigating multiple job losses, housing loss, multiple friendships falling apart, new relationships repeating lessons I swear I’ve learned but question myself and my decision making more than ever before (this keeps me stuck a lot). Moving across the country to two different states away from my dream area, having to forfeit my dog, selling most of what I own, random huge financial transactions popping up, struggling being unemployed the entire time, and eventually having to crash in my Grandfather’s apartment where I’m consistently reliving childhood trauma.

All of this while trying to find work and maintain my physical and mental health. I’ve been in therapy for 3 years now, navigating the remnants of the last abusive relationships and my past trauma so I can make informed and equipped decisions in the future. I’ve been working now, dating, finding healthcare in a new area yet every day I wake up I feel this overwhelming sadness and resentment that sits in the palm of my hand and gets heavier with every day. I’m trying to heal from the past while new experiences continue to hurt me. It’s been difficult healing in an environment I continue to feel hurt.

So much has happened, I feel bitter and skeptical like the very people who’ve hurt me. I find myself acting avoidant despite being more “anxiously attached” in the past. I don’t have a spark left, my creativity has gone stale and time keeps passing faster and faster. I’m working on all this, however, I wanted perspective from people my age or older on what they did when they felt miserable that helped them feel joy again, and move in a better direction for themselves when they didn’t know what that even looked like.

Thank you

I am 23 I’ll be 24 July and I’m a female. I live with my mom and we both get government assistance. Housing, food and she get monthly ssi. Ever since I graduated high school (2021) I was working a cash job cleaning houses. Since April that has ended due to not being paid fairly, over worked and toxic co workers/boss. I hung in there for 4 years but now I’m lost. If I get an actual job I’ll end up having to pay some rent, and my portion of food assistance gets cut off. Also if I make over the allowed amount then I’ll have to move out and she’ll be able to find a 1 bed room for herself and also keep her food stamps. My 41 year old brother lives with us but not on the system. He hasn’t worked in years and he kind of just using this as a break from working and stressing. I could go back to school and I really want to. Maybe this fall at my local community college for medical assistant which takes a year. I do have a bf of 4years and he is always willing to help me with transportation and help support me. Unfortunately it’s very hard to live with my mom. I can’t even say some of the things she’s called me or how much she’s threatened to kick me out and she has mental health issues and it just is so frustrating and depressing sitting home all day with her. I didn’t have a great child hood with her. Even been homeless twice. I want a life. I want better. I want to live my life but at what cost. If I ever try to better myself it was force me to cut ties with my mom and also put my brother in a difficult position because as I stated he doesn’t work and is very overweight but I am so miserable and I know I can do better and be better. Ever since I quit my cash job I have been so depressed and having bad thoughts sitting here and listening to my mom negative talks and feel that energy. I’m not sure what to do. I want to give college a shot but unfortunately my mom keeps talking down on it saying I can’t trust people to help me. Any advice? Ask anything in comments and I’ll do my best to answer them. Thank you.

Question: Will I regret living comfortably even though I am at least somewhat content now?

For context, I'm 22 years old, still live with my parents, and work with my dad making basically minimum wage. When I come home from work, I usually play video games and exercise, then go to sleep(with about 30-60 minutes of YouTube scattered in there), and then I repeat that same routine the next day. Now it's my understanding that most people would consider my lifestyle to be absolutely depressing, but I enjoy it, or at least I think I do, and that is where my problem lies, I'm not sure if I've just gotten so used to avoiding things that I've trained my brain to no longer want to pursue anything, or if I am genuinely content with my life. I would also like to mention that I know for a fact that if I decided not to work with my dad, I would've regretted it later on, even though I make minimum wage(obviously can't make that forever, but for now I think it's ok). Occasionally, I'll see someone around my age with seemingly more life experience and a more active life in general, and I'll get a spike of jealousy, but it fades so quickly that it doesn't urge me to change that much.

I turned 18(male) 2 months ago, and I made no considerable progress in anything major. not in money, a hobby, or finding something I love to do. What do you guys think I should do? I feel really behind.

Is it possible we could go back to 2018? Something went wrong and I want to go back to that year. Is there any way to achieve that? I know time travel is considered nonsense.

basically I asked my coworkers about this older guy hitting on me at our job, and they told me he goes up to every women asks for her number then eventually asks for sexual favors. sooo I kept talking to him with this in mind because my prefrontal cortex isn’t developed yet as I’m not 25 and for some god forsaken reason I thought I would be the one to change him (wrong) anyways my coworker told him I was asking around and he called me today and completely humbled me saying he didn’t want anything with me serious anyways and he only wanted something casual and how I’m annoying and all this other stuff and how I broke his biggest thing which was trust as he told me to explicitly keep it out of work. anyways now I feel a mess because I knew him for 2 months and I talked to him and he did want to do sexual stuff but I was so against it, and now it’s done because of me breaking his trust but I doubt it would have even became something anyways, even though he’d constantly told me he started to change his mind and want something serious (?) weird guy but I just graduated highschool to, I suppose take it as a lesson and move on

Hi! going to leave out identifying details about ages and genders, but i have a friend who’s the same age as me. Me and this friend used to be romantically involved ages ago so you could also call them an ex.

They love rage baiting me and others and they do admit to having a very inappropriate sense of humour. It started off innocently enough like telling me i suck at the sport we both play (basically typical trash talk) then it escalated into personal comments such as that i’m obese and stupid. I’m not overweight or obese, and am smart academically so I took those as jokes. I assumed they were looking for a reaction because they’d often ask if they managed to piss me off yet and laugh. I always laughed along and fed into the jokes most of the time, back when i still found it funny.

Then it became constant, like insult after insult. It also went into a different direction where they insinuated that I still wanna be with them romantically and that i must be mad that they just “used me for hookups in the past” (this comment doesn’t actually reflect what happened in our relationship) I finally told them to stop and they said it was a joke and tried laughing it off. But the way it was said just hurt me, even if it isn’t true. I told them i’m not going to be speaking to them anymore for now if they keep this up.

They said i’ll still be speaking to them because i am very “obedient” i just said “lol” and didn’t reply anymore. I don’t know if this is abusive behaviour on their end, or just a joke/their sense of humour. What should I do?

18M
Through middle school during Covid I was a quiet, lonely kid who didn’t talk to any girls or have any friends. Now that I’m a senior in high school, I have lots of friends, Ive had 2 girlfriends during high school and viewed as “a popular kid” by many. 2 weeks ago at prom, someone from another school came up to me, asked if I was … and I said yes. Then they said “I heard you run shit around here” (meaning I’m a popular kid). I remember a teacher asked me how I seemed so confident at all times 2 years ago, and I still remember it to this day. Now I don’t say this to toot my horn, but to explain the contrast in how I feel, vs how others view me. While I may be popular and confident on the outside, on the inside I’m the most insecure, embarrassed kid ever. How can I be viewed as such a confident and likeable person when I don’t even like myself?

In the start of high school I had bad acne, I remember spending hours researching how to solve it, trying hundreds of different products and losing my mind over my face. I wore a hood everyday for 2 years because I couldn’t stand people looking at me. I couldn’t keep eye contact with anyone because I couldn’t stop thinking about how they viewed me. But nobody has ever known this. Eventually I found good friends in high school, but they don’t know how bad I struggled, and neither do my 2 ex girlfriends.

The past year, I’ve struggled with losing my ex as she went off to college. I cried everyday for months, and couldn’t stop thinking about her at all times during the day. But nobody knew. I had this smile during the day and at all times to hide my emotions. I would listen to the saddest music, and obsess over her, but nobody knew, not even my 2 closest friends.

My brother went to a depression type of rehab place for 2 weeks 3 years ago. I didn’t tell anyone, and I lost my mind thinking about him and what he was going through. But nobody knew. I always hid who I was.

Some kid in my school explained how he never looks at himself in the mirror and took a good look in the mirror while we were in the bathroom. I thought to myself, is this what normal people are like? I spend hours everyday looking at myself in the mirror. Analyzing everything about myself trying different ways to look better and to not feel so insecure.

At the end of the day, when I make it back to my room by myself. I let the mask go. I enjoy different music then what other people think I do, watch different shows and movies, think about stuff nobody would think I would, and even write on Reddit for random people to give me advice. If anyone knew these certain things about me, id want to die from embarrassment.

How can I be viewed as confident, even when I can’t find something I like about myself? I Why do I feel the need to hide who I am? Why am I ashamed of what I like? I don’t think any advice is going to make me turn into this new person where I can voice who i really am, but I just want to know why I’m like this? So please feel free to give any advice, or thoughts. Thank you

Forewarning: sorry if this is hard to read I’m not really good about talking about how I feel.

I, 23f have been with my fiancé, 27m, for about three and a half years and have been living together for I think three. Our living situation is definitely unorthodox as we live with his parents and his younger sister who is 10 and we pay $700 in rent to them and we still help around the house with chores. Recently I have just finished cancer treatment and he stuck with me through all of it and drove me to appointments but didn’t really with the household stuff until I had a breakdown and then he only helped for a few weeks. Back in Feb/March I stayed in NYC for six weeks with my mom receiving harsh treatment for the cancer and it was the most free that I had felt in a long time and felt the most like myself than I had even before the cancer. My fiancé and I used to work for the same company but in different positions and he made roughly $45/hr where I make $27/hr he left the company a year ago and started a job where he makes half of what he used to and now he has no health benefits or anything and made me the breadwinner. I brought up us moving to NYC together as we have a few years before we can have kids he shut down that idea entirely. Most of me can see myself having a future with this man because I do love him and he makes me laugh and most of the time feel happy and I’ve never been in love with anyone else the way I love him but a part of me is wondering if staying is the right choice or leave even though it would hurt. I’ve talked to him about getting a different high paying job but he refuses to and he talks about moving out of his parent but I don’t know if that’s actually something he wants. Oh and I just remembered before posting we have a week long vacation planned with his family in August and a weekend trip to the finger lakes in November also with his family but we never do anything with mine.

So, I’m 17 turning 18 F just graduated and I just put my two weeks in and honestly I feel good about it. The only downside is I’m a female who likes to get her hair done, nails done and etc. So, I feel like that will be the hardest part but besides that I decided to go back to school this fall instead of spring because at first I was going to thug it out at my current job till spring semester but my supervisor and co workers just give me the ick their all older than me and try to run me because I am young and openly admitted to that. I am continuing school so I don’t have to worry about being overworked AND underpaid. Idk I just need some advice rn to cope bc I feel like I’m loosing it and on top of all this my mom threatens to kick me out!

Without going into too many details I work at my dream job in higher education. My job enables me to do what I have been most passionate about my entire life. The actual "work" hours are far less then I am being paid for (I am currently 30 hours a week all year around in terms of pay, but actual work is less then 20 hours if I am being honest probably even less) I also believe I do my job fairly well all things considered.

But here is the issue: I am worried I could lose it at any moment. Higher education is in a awkward spot, budgets are being cut, things are being looked at and scrutinized very closely. There is alot of dead time in my position, especially over the summer. My direct supervisor has been very open with me about how the eye of sauron is gazing at us, and they are very particular about what exactly I am doing over the summer. We have been brainstorming more of a concrete schedule and busy work for me to do, but Im afraid its not going to be enough long term.

If my position goes to a 9-10 month type of deal, Im going to lose out of my full time benefits (Im close enough to full time to receive benefits). I only make 31k a year so money is pretty tight as is.

Part of me is wondering if its really worth it. I could go to costco, make far more money, work towards a supervisor position (I do have a college degree) and potentially make more then double what I make right now.

I guess I fear I am falling behind in life big time, just so I can enjoy a super easy fun job, but knowing that the sustainability of it could very easily be taken away at any moment and Ill be left with nothing but memories and a feeling I could have been much further ahead by now.

So there have been 3 girls that my brother has dated who have called me crying saying my brother was physically abusive towards them, whether the cops get called or not he goes to jail then they release him with no consequences. I got better at dealing with the aftermath as time went on I even stayed friends with the 3rd girl who called. He recently logged into his Instagram on my phone and I saw on my notifications that he's been slapping and leaving bruises on this girl he's talking to (he obviously doesn't only talk to her) idk ive been starting to grow more angry with him and idk how to address this issue with him. I've told him in the past that he needs to go to therapy and process all the abuse he went through as a kid. Unfortunately he doesn't believe in therapy. Im not sure if I should cut him off or just anonymously say something.

That question had been on my mind ever since the results of the second semester began to come, for some context, i am 18F, first year in CS engineering, and i failed my first semester tried even more harder during the second, at first i felt hopeful but my grades speak otherwise. You see i never intended to do CS in the first place. My entire childhood i wanted to be a doctor sure i loved computers, and said during a few years of my highschool that i wanted to go to the national AI top college in our country but for that you have to get like 19/20 on BAC (it's like the SAT's but in our country) i was scientific stream which was way harder to achieve, at the end i got 15 almost 16, and since i got good grades in math and physics, i was given more technical majors, and when i applied i was accepted in aeronautics, my mom went ballistic, and said that i did it on purpose, she wanted me to go into biology, but i switched out behind her back, so when i couldn't go there anymore, she demanded i go into CS, i had no choice but to switch, also she demanded i repeat the BAC, while studied my first year, i stood my ground, and said no(i kinda regret it i should have repeated it, but there was no guarantee i would get a better grade) so i started CS, we got a weird educational system here, at first CS was good then it quickly switched to hard, and i found myself struggling with Algebra and calculus, after failing my first semester everyone kept trying to encourage me to try harder that it was okay, second semester i really did try harder, i gave it all, but it became harder to keep up, and everything was cramped from tests to exams, and when i was done with it i truly felt i did good, but my grades were all failing grades, i mean there is another chance something called (ratrrapage) basically another chance to retake the exams, and try to pass, but the exams where already hard, i doubt they would make these easier, so i am kinda feeling down and gave up, which got me to think maybe cs isn't for me, amd i should just expect that fact, even tho I don't want to fail, and i feel ashamed that i am going too

(I am in a dark time now, mom is telling me to pray to god, no one seems to get it, i feel like i am drowning everyday, especially after i got my heartbroken on top, whenever i try to explain what i am feel i am brushed off as immature, or that i am too young to think that much, or that i am overdoing it, but honestly i just feel like i am fading everyday, and i am sick and tired of people telling me that i got potential because honestly I can't see it anymore)

I’m a 23-year-old male from the South East of England and I’ve recently started a new fully remote job that pays £75,000 per year, Monday to Friday. For context, less then 2 years ago i was earning 29k a year.

I know this is an exceptional salary for someone my age, and I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunity. However, I’ve also had a strong desire for years to take 1–2 years out to travel the world while I’m still young, single, and living at home with relatively few responsibilities.

The dilemma is that the industry I now work in is extremely niche. Opportunities like this are rare, especially in the South East, and it’s highly unlikely I would find another role with a similar salary and flexibility if I walked away from this one.

So I feel like I’m faced with two potentially once-in-a-lifetime opportunities:

1. A career opportunity that could set me up financially for years to come.
2. The chance to travel extensively while I’m still young and free of major commitments.

Part of me thinks I should stay in the job for a few years, build up savings and experience, and travel later. Another part of me worries that life circumstances could change, and I may never have the same freedom to take an extended trip.

If you were in my position, what would you do?

I’d really appreciate any advice, especially from people who have faced a similar decision.

Hi,

I have been smoking weed for the past 12 years sometimes on and off, however, for the past 3 years I've been regularly smoking. For some reason, I decided to stop cold Turkey in January. However, since then I have not been able to sleep well, I have lost my appetite, I do not find any pleasure in any activity which I previously enjoyed. I have developed severe anxiety which stays with me most of the time. I get a feeling of impending doom and many times my heart starts racing and I feel that I am trapped somewhere. I was a heavy user and probably I should not have quit cold turkey.

Most of the websites on the internet mentioned that the symptoms last for one to two months however it has been 5 months now and I am wondering if it is possible for the symptoms to last this long?

I was wondering if I start smoking weed again will that help to reduce my anxiety?

Please help!