Dear ALittleLost:

A little summary of what you shared: you are about to turn 34, living with family (parents?). You are currently unemployed and have been applying for full time work in various locations not  knowing where you want to live next. You have the beginning of a small business and you feel confident in your skills and the potential of this business to produce living income for you, but it is not producing that yet, and it requires much more time and work, if I understand correctly.

Question: is this business an online business, one that you can work on from any location?

My input: I remember as a child observing ants working diligently to build their home. Every time their home was destroyed, they didn’t hesitate for a moment, immediately they proceeded to build again, from the beginning. This is what we humans need to do as well, restart, rebuild, from the beginning.

What is past is just that, it no longer exists. There is great sadness in accepting this, in saying goodbye to what we hoped for and how we felt when we hoped for what we did. But we can’t get it back.

So now what?

Answer: “a Reset  Button”, you said it yourself. Start from the beginning. If your small business, still in its infancy, can be done from any location, then if I was you, I would move to a less busy location, not a busy, expensive city, but a place were rents are lower. I would find a job that pays well enough and continue to develop the business. I would look for a friend, over time, a boyfriend in that new location.

The shame you mentioned, what is that about?

anita

Dear ALittleLost:

More of my thoughts and an answer  to your question at the end of your post:

You lived with a boyfriend and at 34 you are back living with family. I will assume you are living with your parent/s, perhaps in your childhood home. You wrote: “I so  wanted a family by now, not to be homeless and sad”- but you are not homeless, not if you are living with your parents, in your childhood home.

I think that your experience as a child living in your childhood home was this, more or less (the italicization is mine): “so I went to stay with my family… I’ve become stuck, and ashamed, and probably rather depressed... I don’t feel confident about any decision. I feel panicky and lost most days, unable to comfortably make any proper decision, feeling ashamed… and scared… completely stuck in an emotional hole… and I feel so utterly alone... so emotionally fragile and lonely and fearful… incapable.. homeless and sad“.

If your childhood home was a happy place, and you returned to it at 34, it wouldn’t have been the same because you are older now and hoped to be married and settled elsewhere by now, but it wouldn’t be all these negative things for you either. You would feel safe in the warmth and understanding of your parent/s, comfortable, getting your strength back and more confident regarding your future away from home.

But what you have been experiencing is probably what you experienced before. If I am correct, then my answer to your question: “how to regain some positivity and a sense of hope in life to move myself forward?” is-

leave the home of your childhood, go elsewhere. Living with your family probably reactivates hopelessness and keeps you in that emotional hole you mentioned. Do all you can to relocate as soon as you can and plan your future from that different, new location.

anita