u/Chemical_Pipe_3937

im a 25 year old woman, almost 26, and im living what i can only describe as a quiet hell rn.

ive been under an insane amount of stress for the past 2 months. about 3 months ago i moved to a new city and stayed at a friends house until i could find a place of my own. it was a pretty uncomfortable situation but eventually i found a nice place to rent. it was expensive, but worth it at the time because it was close to work.

the problem is that around the same time, i lost one of my remote freelance jobs. since then ive basically been drowning financially. between rent, groceries and transportation, ive accumulated around £1000 in debt, and i also owe my mom around £1500 that i havent been able to pay back yet.

and then theres work. what used to be a stable job has become so stressful. the industry is struggling and im constantly worried about losing my job. on top of that, my boss fired a coworker a while ago and gave me all of his clients, so my workload basically doubled.

he also gave me responsibilities in an area ive never worked with before and said i could get training, but i literally dont have time to do the training because im so overwhelmed with everything else. so ive just been learning as i go and trying to figure things out myself, which is exhausting. i genuinely feel like im carrying the entire team on my back and im so burned out.

at the same time, my personal life isnt exactly great either. im dealing with relationship issues with someone who's going to be moving away soon, and i feel like our time together is limited. im also living far away from my family, so i dont really have that support system around me.

it just feels like everything is happening at once. im struggling financially, im scared i might lose my job, my relationship might be coming to an end, and i wont even get to see my family until december.

i feel like i havent had a single moment to breathe in months. every time i try to get one thing under control, something else happens.

today i had an issue with my bank account and it was literally enough to make me have a panic attack. something so small in comparison to everything else im dealing with, but i just completely broke down.

im not even a suicidal person, but lately ive started having thoughts that maybe it would just be better if i died because i genuinely dont know how much more i can take.

i dont even know what im looking for by posting this. maybe i just need to vent or hear from people who've been through something similar. i feel like im drowning and i dont know how to get out of this situation. im so tired of constantly having to figure things out and deal with one problem after another.

okay so a few days ago I posted here saying I fucking hated my job and after that idk what happened exactly but I just... stopped giving a fuck since then I’ve been in 5 different interviews and I might have TWO potential positions coming up, which is honestly refreshing because apparently the fastest way to get out of a shitty job is to mentally leave before you physically do.

I work remotely and technically I should have some flexibility with my hours, but my boss is the kind of boss where if I don’t reply within 5 minutes, he starts tagging me repeatedly until I appear or he’ll post something in the main channel like “you have to be responsive.”

bro. I was just taking a shit what exactly did you think was happening?

and honestly, since that day, I’ve just been doing my tasks and going about my day I stopped staring at slack every 5 minutes waiting for someone to assign me another fucking thing I removed that shit from my phone I started blocking off my calendar so I actually have breathing room and If I have nothing to do don't invent work for myself just to look busy

and I cannot tell you how much my mental health has improved because the reality is... I’m not saving lives. I’m not performing emergency surgery. I’m not putting people in or getting people out of jail I work in fucking marketing

if I reply to your message in 17 minutes instead of 4 no one will fucking die

anyway, maybe this is terrible advice, but weirdly my best coping mechanism has been to stop giving a fuck at the end of the day your boss does NOT own you and he's not doing you a favor remind yourself THEY'RE NOT DOING YOU A FAVOR!!!!!!!

I think I’ve officially reached the point where I can’t pretend I’m okay with my job anymore. i’m honestly just exhausted and increasingly angry about the whole situation

it has gotten to the point where I wake up in the morning, remember that I have to work, and my body actually hurts l ike that immediate feeling of dread before I’ve even opened my laptop. My chest feels heavy, I’m tense, I don’t want to get out of bed, and I already feel exhausted thinking about the day ahead and then there’s my boss who is honestly an asshole

everything about the job has started to irritate me the emails the meetings the messages and i cant hide it. i get into calls with a shit face even my boss noticed and I cant afford to get fired but i also feel like im about to go insane.

don’t even know if I need advice at this point I just need to share how much I hate to see if it helps me cope with it...i am dreaming for a world we wont need to be in situations that make us feel so bad. no one should have to go through feeling unbearable for MONEY

im so done

My mom’s husband used to make sexual comments about me when I was around 16 or 17.

I don't even know exactly when it started. I remember one of the first things he asked me was whether I shaved my intimate parts. After that, it slowly became this weird obsession with any guy I knew. He would get extremely jealous of boys I talked to, stalk me on social media, go into my room and look through my lingerie. I remember my mom buying me this bra and underwear set. He saw it, and a few days later I found him in my room, and it looked like he had put together some kind of outfit with it. But even writing that makes me question myself. Maybe I left it like that. Maybe I’m remembering it wrong. Maybe it wasn't him.

That’s one of the hardest things about remembering all of this. So much of it was very indirect. There were few obvious moment where I could point at something and say, this is exactly what happened. It was a collection of things that made me uncomfortable, but because none of them felt clear enough on their own, I spent years wondering if I was imagining it. Once, I found drawings of naked women inside my art notebook. I think they were made by him, but they could have been mine. I genuinely don't know anymore.

Sometimes I feel like my own mind is working against me. I remember things and then immediately start questioning whether they actually happened. He never touched me, at least not in a way that I remember. But he would masturbate in open spaces, like the living room, sometimes while my grandma was there, and he would use my computer in my room to watch porn. He made sexual comments about me. And when I eventually told my mom, he screamed at me and threatened to tell her that I had a drug addiction so I wouldn't tell her what was actually happening.

I did tell my mom anyway, and she brushed it off lol she basically said he was a bit of a nonsense.

I think that changed something between us. I love my mom. I really do. But I don't know how to be around her sometimes. And maybe that's part of why I've been running away from her ever since I got my first job and moved out. I'm always somewhere else. Always travelling, always finding another place to be.

Sometimes I wonder if being away from her makes it easier to forget.

It's been almost ten years now. He's still with her. They both apologized to me a few years ago and said they knew it was a bad situation to put me through, which I just said "its okay"

And the weird thing is, I don't feel angry at him anymore, sometimes I can sit at the same table as him and eat dinner. Sometimes I even feel compassion for him and then I feel guilty about that. I wonder if I'm supposed to hate him. I wonder if the fact that I don't hate him means that maybe it wasn't as bad as I think it was.

Sometimes I even wonder if I'm not as fucked up as they are because I can forgive both?

But if this had happened to someone I knew, I know exactly how I'd react. I'd be furious. I'd want to protect them. I'd tell them that what happened wasn't okay.

I just can't seem to feel that same anger for myself. I've always had a really hard time being happy. I struggle with anxiety and mood swings. I can feel completely fine and then suddenly feel empty or overwhelmed. I don't know how much of that is just who I am, how much is life, and how much might come from what happened when I was younger.

I never really treated the trauma. I'm not even sure I've ever allowed myself to call it trauma. I am going through a weird moment right now and I remembered this, which gave a necessity of talking about it. No one in my life knows about this, I think I always scared of people thinking my mom is a bad person? I wonder if I will ever be able to forget this, or maybe just be able to enjoy happiness.

this is gonna be long lol

in 2023 I moved countries for the first time and lived there until 2025 I didn't really like the country (the food and the weather were just not for me), moved back home with my ex (met him there) and we lived a pretty okay 2025 but our relationship didn't work and we broke up.

i realized I needed a change or I needed some time for myself and here we go again, I decided to do a 40 day trip to europe. what started at 40 days became months and I am still here, currently living in a specific country (i have a passport) until january even tho I miss my family and my pets, im just not ready, and they dont really understand it, they feel like i've abandoned them which is far from the truth

ive met so many people, volunteered at hostels, eaten things ive never tried before, and explored places I never thought I would. this was really important to me because Ive had some rough couple of years (I was SA by someone in my family when I was a teenager and this took a toll on me so i've been struggle with mental health since I was around 16-17) and it was the first time that I felt alive in so long

about 3 months ago I decided to settle down in this specific city (i have a passport) and have a in depth experience of how it feels to live here. got into a movie club, decided I support this football club, do day trips

the thing is... I think I have a problem lol. I have friends here where I am now, people I hangout with, I go out, I explore new things, I even have a situationship which for most would be bad but we're doing pretty well. I am a little short on money, but im still better off than a lot of people. my job is a bit stressful, but its also not the end of the world, and im looking for other jobs anyway.

but sometimes I will wake up and feel like crying for no reason? which is so odd because, zooming out, I have the life I always dreamed of, but somehow I just cant be with myself.

the feeling I have is that I NEED to be doing things and I NEED to always be moving, because if I stop, then I dont know what to do with myself.

has anyone felt like this? I feel SO BAD because my problems feel really small. today was one of those days, I woke up early to say goodbye to the guy I mentioned before, came back to bed, slept, wake up and started feeling kinda sad?

sometimes i wonder if this life I've been living since march isn't a fraud (my mom keeps saying this is not real life and I will need to eventually go back to my real life which to be fair I am not sure what it is anymore) and maybe thats whats "depressing me"

anyways I am not even sure what I want getting this posted on reddit I guess I just needed to vent?

I'm a student who moved to London from abroad like 2 months ago and I'm currently paying around £1680 for a room in a shitty building which I came to realize is way too much, the thing is I can't find anywhere else cheaper for a international student like me :( they all have been asking either for someone who is staying a longer period or someone who has a guarantoor or whatever. All I have is my money basically lol I am starting to spiral cause I need to find somewhere to live by first week of next month and I am starting to think I am about to be a homeless gal in LDN

Any tips? I've tried spare room but people always end up rejecting me cause I'm looking for a short let

and i don't mean average in a “i'm ugly and boring” kind of way. i mean genuinely average. like... i'm pretty average. i'm not the prettiest girl in the room, but i'm not ugly. i'm not skinny, but i'm not particularly bothered by that either. i'm not rich, i'm not insanely successful, i'm not the funniest person you've ever met. i'm just kind of... okay. i exist somewhere in the middle of everything. and sometimes i genuinely wonder where everyone like me is because online it feels like every girl has this incredibly interesting, whimsical life. everyone has hobbies and routines and passions and little things that make them interesting. they're waking up at 6am to go running, making matcha, learning pottery, reading books, going to pilates, having dinner parties, learning a language, taking film photos, whatever. and i'm sitting here waking up at 11am with no routine and absolutely no idea what i'm supposed to do with the day

i don't really have hobbies. i don't have some secret passion i've been nurturing since childhood. sometimes i go out. sometimes i stay home. sometimes i do something genuinely fun and sometimes i spend an entire day on my phone and then suddenly it's 8pm and i'm like well that was apparently today

and i don't even necessarily want to become one of these super interesting girls. i think that's the weird part. i'm not sitting here desperately wishing i was thinner or richer or more productive or more beautiful. i'm just wondering if i'm missing some fundamental part of being a person because everyone seems so... fully formed

EVERYONE HAS A THING!!!!!!

maybe this is just an internet problem because obviously nobody is posting “woke up at 11:30, had toast, did nothing particularly meaningful, stared at the ceiling for 20 minutes, went to the supermarket and came home.” but sometimes i genuinely forget that those people must exist too

there must be millions of girls whose lives are just completely ordinary. who aren't particularly impressive or tragic. who don't have a five-year plan. who don't have a cute morning routine. who don't have a hobby that makes them sound interesting at parties. who are sometimes motivated and sometimes incredibly lazy. who like some things and don't care about other things. who are happy sometimes and bored sometimes and don't have a particularly cohesive aesthetic or personality

anyway. where are you, average girls? what does your extremely normal, mildly unremarkable life look like? i would actually love to hear about it

I feel like I’m hitting a bit of a burnout wall and I’m curious if anyone else is experiencing the same thing.

I work in performance marketing, and lately I feel like I can’t catch a break. We’ve had several clients leave, performance across some accounts hasn’t been great, and the expectations can sometimes feel completely insane. There’s this constant pressure to make everything work, all the time, even when there are so many things that are outside of our control.

I've been working with PPC for the last 5 years, so I can say I know something about it, even though I am still learning everyday.

What makes it worse is that you can do everything you think is right..test new things, optimize campaigns, change strategy, dig into the data, and sometimes performance just... drops? And because everything is so numbers-driven, it feels like I am the one personally failing when the numbers aren't where they should be.

I think I'm also struggling with the expectation that performance should always be improving. There doesn't seem to be much room for normal fluctuations, testing periods, or just having a bad week.

Lately I've noticed that I'm carrying the stress of the accounts around even when I'm not working. A bad day in the dashboard can genuinely ruin my mood, which makes me think I'm probably approaching burnout.

Does anyone else working in performance marketing feel this way? How do you deal with the anxiety/stress when performance drops without letting it consume you? I could really use some help here!!!

I’m curious if anyone else has done this, because I’m starting to realize that I have a really hard time explaining why I moved to the UK.

There wasn’t some huge life event. I didn’t get an amazing job offer, I wasn’t escaping a terrible situation, I didn’t have a partner here, and I wasn’t following some 10-year plan.
My thought process was basically:

I wanted to live in the UK → I had the means/opportunity to do it → so I did.

That was genuinely it.

I wanted to experience what it was like to actually live somewhere else rather than just visit. I wanted to wake up in a different country, meet different people, experience a different culture, have a completely different routine for a while. And because I was in a position where I could do that, I figured… why not?

But whenever people ask me “Why did you move to the UK?”, I feel weird saying “because I wanted to.” It almost sounds irresponsible or like there must be some deeper explanation that I'm missing.

And I think the stranger part is that sometimes I wonder whether it was actually a bad decision.

Not necessarily because I hate it here, I've had some amazing experiences and I'm genuinely glad I got to do this. But when you make a huge life decision without a concrete objective, it's difficult to measure whether it was “worth it.”

If you move because of a job, you can say, I moved for this career opportunity.

If you move because of university, you can say, I moved for my degree.

If you move because of a relationship, you can say, I moved for this person.

But what do you say when the reason is simply:

“I was curious. I wanted to know what my life would look like somewhere else. I could do it, so I did.”
Has anyone else made a major move purely because they wanted to experience another life, without having a particularly practical reason for doing it?

And if you've done it and later questioned whether it was the right decision, how did you make peace with that?

I created a WhatsApp group for people who are interested in meeting new people, making friends, and having more things to do together.

The idea is pretty simple: create an active group where people can chat, suggest plans, and actually meet up rather than joining another group that goes completely silent after a week 😅

Some of the things we’d love to organize:

• Coffee / casual meetups ☕
• Coworking sessions 💻
• Drinks, nights out & dancing 🪩
• Networking and meeting people from different backgrounds
• Random spontaneous plans
• Or just chatting and getting to know each other

There’s really only one main rule: try to be active and social.

You don’t have to come to everything or message every day, but the whole point is to have people who genuinely want to participate, meet others, and help make the group fun.

If that sounds like your kind of thing, comment or DM me and I’ll send you the WhatsApp link :)

Hey everyone!

I created a WhatsApp group for people who are interested in meeting new people, making friends, and having more things to do together.

The idea is pretty simple: create an active group where people can chat, suggest plans, and actually meet up rather than joining another group that goes completely silent after a week 😅

Some of the things we’d love to organize:

• Coffee / casual meetups ☕
• Coworking sessions 💻
• Drinks, nights out & dancing 🪩
• Networking and meeting people from different backgrounds
• Random spontaneous plans
• Or just chatting and getting to know each other

There’s really only one main rule: try to be active and social.

You don’t have to come to everything or message every day, but the whole point is to have people who genuinely want to participate, meet others, and help make the group fun.

If that sounds like your kind of thing, comment or DM me and I’ll send you the WhatsApp link :)

currently living in london for a couple more months. i work remotely, so i don’t really have the easiest way of meeting people here and i’ve realised i’m feeling a bit lonely lately 🥲

i’ve mostly been using apps like TripBFF to meet people, which has been nice, but i’d really love to actually find a little community here rather than just meeting someone once and never seeing them again.

i’m very much into coffee dates, walks, exploring london, cute restaurants, drinks, museums, random activities/classes, going out, or honestly just sitting somewhere and talking for hours haha.

i’m based in east london but happy to go anywhere! would love to meet some girls who are also looking for friends and maybe we can start a little group/chat and actually make some plans 🥹

if you’re in a similar situation, feel free to comment or dm me 💗

I grew up being the emotional support for my family. I was the youngest, but somehow I represented hope, especially for my mom. Even as a kid, I felt responsible for keeping things okay, making sure everyone was emotionally stable, avoiding conflict, being the "strong one."

The problem is that I don't think I ever learned what it feels like to be emotionally taken care of myself.

I'm a very independent person. I travel alone, I solve my own problems, I rarely ask for help. Most people would probably describe me as someone who has their life together.

But underneath that, I'm also incredibly lonely.

I don't really tell people how I'm feeling because I don't want to be needy. I know everyone has their own problems, and I feel guilty expecting someone to stop what they're doing just because I'm having a hard time.

Recently I realized something that made me surprisingly emotional.

I don't actually want someone to fix my life. I just want to know what it feels like for someone to genuinely take care of me for once. To ask how I'm doing and really listen. To notice when I'm struggling without me having to make a case for why I deserve support. To feel like someone wants to carry a little bit of the weight with me.

And honestly... I don't even know how to ask for that. Just typing this makes me feel embarrassed.

I also keep noticing the same pattern in my relationships. In my last relationship, I was the one paying for things, cleaning, organizing, solving problems, making things easier for the other person. I felt alone even though I wasn't single.

With friends, I'm usually the one making plans or checking in first.

Now I'm dating someone new, and I'm catching myself slipping into that same role again, always being the first to reach out or make things happen.

I'm not trying to paint myself as a victim. Part of me thinks I probably put myself in these positions because it's familiar. Maybe I give too much before anyone even has the chance to give back. Maybe I unintentionally teach people that I don't need anything.

I don't know.

I just know I'm exhausted from always being the capable one.

Has anyone else grown up like this? Did you ever learn how to let people take care of you without feeling guilty or weak? And how do you even recognize people who are capable of doing that?