Hello.

First off let me just say I am new to these forums. I really enjoy reading and have made a few comments but have yet to post. I am currently going through a tough time and think getting some insight/perspective might help. I’m sorry if this is long… I hope somebody will read and reply as just knowing I’m not alone might help…

So I am a 28-year-old female from the UK, and I recently moved to a different city. For the last 5 years I have been in a job I hated with people who were not very nice to me. I wanted to leave after about a year in but my mental health (anxiety, panic attacks, depression that I am on medication for) got so bad that at one point I couldn’t work at all, let alone go through the stress of interviews and change. After reaching breaking point with my work environment, I sucked up my fears and applied to a handful of jobs, where I eventually landed a much better one in a different city. I was really excited about the new role because although it is a slight drop in salary, the organisation and people are much better. The move was exciting too, because the city is the one my brother lives in. I am good friends with my brother and his partner, and they have a 1 year old daughter who I am excited to get to see more often.

Everything should be exciting, but the downside is that because of costs of living alone, I have to live in shared accommodation. I only had a month to find somewhere affordable to live. I saw about 10 places and most were terrible. I found one that was okay-ish with a larger room for the few pieces of furniture I have acquired and in a really good location – close to shops, close to major roads for my commute, free parking and a bonus is that it’s walkable to my brothers house.

I moved in two weeks ago and I have not stopped crying. The job was an adjustment, but I am fairly good at just getting stuck in and things feel a little easier now. The problem is that I do not like the house I have moved into. It’s large and dark with 6 people living there. Weird musty smells seem to linger in all the hallways (just old and run down, not damp or anything). The bathroom and kitchen are both dirty all the time – I have been wearing flip-flops and taking my toiletries back into my bedroom with me. There is a living room, but I have seen nobody sit in it. People just come and go, throw something in the microwave and hide in their bedrooms. It feels more like a cheap hostel than a house. And I still pay an insane amount to live there, comparatively.

Hiding in bedrooms is fine with me. I am not naturally very social, I understand the need for your own space. In all of my shared houses I try and make my bedroom as homely as possible. I have an armchair so that I am not always on my bed and I try and separate where I live (watch TV, read, do crafts) from where I sleep as much as possible with the space I have. But the problem that just seems to make my heart sink is that it is not a home and never will be. I have been coming home every night feeling sick and miserable, calling my mum in tears, feeling so homesick for a life I don’t even know. She doesn’t know what to say to me anymore and I feel guilty for loading that emotional baggage on her all the time.

I am two years away from 30, and the dreams I had for my life by now seem so distant. Most of my closest friends are married or in long term relationships. Most of them have houses, a couple rent with partners and are close to buying somewhere. My best friend has a husband, a baby, a beautiful house. I have none of these things. It feels so unfair, that I have worked just as hard as all of them, have developed my career from nothing, have put up with internships and low paid jobs to get up on the ladder. I have not been lazy or unambitious. I moved out of home to gain independence, make friends etc. I have done what I am meant to do and feel like I have nothing in return. The housing market is impossible for single people and it is so, so unfair.

I just cannot afford to live alone. I have not had a partner since I was 18, so I have been on my own for a decade. I am cripplingly lonely. In that time I have done everything people say to “enjoy being alone”. I preach this to people who are newly single, too. And yeah, I love being alone. I’ll go for day trips, go to the cinema, enjoy crafts by myself, I’ve joined clubs and classes. I am good at still doing things even when I don’t have anyone to do them with. But honestly, after a while, after a decade of having my “big girl pants” on and getting on with things regardless, being alone is just lonely and it feels like there is nothing I can do about it.

I long for someone to love. For someone to make a home with and to have a family with. I am painfully jealous of my friends who have somewhere that is homely, where they can invite me over and make me a cup of tea. Sit on the sofa and watch TV. I have a dingy little room in what feels like a hostel. I am jealous of my brother, who has his own house and his family to call his own. I am fearful of encroaching too much on their life because I am lonely here in this new city. Even going to their house now feels painful because I hate having to leave!

I am a real homebody, an introvert who takes comfort in the familiar. I am desperate to have a life that feels like my own, but right now I just feel like I am floating. Nowhere feels like home – my parents house (although comforting to be there) no longer feels like ‘home’ as I haven’t lived there since I finished university. My brothers house feels welcoming and I feel at ease there, but it is not my home. My best friends house is a nice place to retreat to for an evening, but it makes me feel more inadequate and lonely when I leave to go back to my sad cave of isolation, where I cannot spend prolonged time anywhere by my bedroom, and my housemates are a rotating door of strangers with pot-luck hygiene habits. Where is my home? I feel like I don’t exist anywhere. Where is MY OWN family and the life I imagined?

It feels so unfair, and I realise that makes me sound entitled and childish, but that’s just the honest emotion I am feeling. Everyone keeps saying things they think are helpful, like “Everyone’s on their own path”, “it’s not a race”, “just cause others are getting married doesn’t mean you have to” etc.

These things might be comforting if I was HAPPY with where I was, but I am not. So I just feel trapped in sadness, jealousy, inadequacy, homesickness for nothing, emptiness…

I do not know what to do. I could just about to rent a place on my own if I budgeted every single penny. And I really mean that – it would be touch and go. I would have to live frugally, I would not be able to save to do anything. I priced it up and I might even struggle to pay the payments on the few debts I have, if anything crops up (those annoying life things like car repairs, dental surgery, parking fine etc.) I would be in trouble. My family have no money to help me. The thought of being under further financial strain is terrifying, and those things are why I chose to go into the house share situation as my only option. But at this point I am wondering if it’s worth trading this emptiness I feel for financial strain instead…?

I’m 28, fairly successful career-wise (though not really well paid), have people who love me (wonderful parents, great brother, gorgeous niece, a handful of nice friends who include me even though they are married), but I just feel so incredibly lonely and un-successful in comparison.

I feel like I do not exist, and right now that feeling is crippling. I fear that I will reach 40 and still have nothing to show for my life. Seeing other people have the family life I want really hurts. I long to come home to somebody, or just to a space that I have made my own. I’d love to have pets. I’d love to have friends over. I’d love to have a garden I can invite my nieces and nephews over on a Sunday afternoon for a BBQ. All these little things that make life a life just seem so far from MY life, and yet those around me seem to have achieved them with ease (or maybe not ease, but have at least achieved them). And if I can’t ever have it, I just want to curl up and disappear.

Where do I even go from here? I am trapped in this house share for 6 months because of the contract, so moving anywhere won’t be any earlier than late January next year. I feel so alone and lost, desperate for a solution I don’t think even exists…….