Six months after high school… and I feel completely lost (TW)

Hi, I graduated from high school about six months ago. I worked so I could finance my studies starting this October.

Now studying isn’t working out. I can’t find an apartment I can afford, and honestly, I’m not even sure whether this study program would really fulfill me or be something I could see myself doing for the rest of my life.

So I’m “at home.” There’s a lot of conflict there, and I really just want to leave as soon as possible. But how, without a plan or any perspective?

I don’t know where to go or what to do. Every attempt to figure out what I want to do ends with the realization that, because of past events, I first need to get away from my home environment if I want to be happy in the long term.

I want to experience so much, but everything feels so hopeless because I’m so alone and at the same time dependent on people (my family) who give me neither support, nor safety, nor comfort — quite the opposite, actually.

It’s very hard when you have to fight for every breath, every word, every dream until your whole body and mind just feel empty. It’s so hard every time that it hardly feels worth it to dream at all. I don’t know why I’m alive, and I don’t even know if I really want to be right now.

My mother once shouted at me in public, in a café, “Why are you alive?!” — even though I had just been telling her how lost and without perspective I feel — and that made everything worse. I don’t even know the answer myself (yet).

I kept coming back to that question even before graduating. Back then, at least I had a goal in front of me and a school routine to manage. I achieved the goal of graduating, but now everything that was supposed to come next feels unreachable and meaningless.

Has anyone been in a similar place, or does anyone have advice on how to escape this situation? I’d really appreciate your thoughts.