Waiting for the tide to turn

The last year and a half has felt so tough. 

To preface this, I’m from the UK but have been living in Canada since 2022. I gave up a career in publishing to try out a new life out here, I just turned 28 (f). I know the late 20s are a notoriously turbulent arc of life but I’m really struggling - every door I turn to seems to be closed. 

This is more of a vent than anything, but any advice is welcome. Or anyone who was going through a rut like me and how the tide eventually turned and things got better, can give me hope. 

Things all started to go wrong last July when my first time and only ever love so far dumped me, I’ll call him Toby. We hadn’t been dating very long, and I loved him so much. The break-up really blindsided me and I truly didn’t expect it. He never spoke about his feelings and I think ultimately it comes down to the fact he wasn’t ready for a relationship - he’s avoidant and I believe he saw personal growth as him no longer being true to himself. He’s a couple of years younger so I think that may have been a factor. I know that he loved me but I do think I loved him more, and I truly didn’t even understand how much I loved him until we broke up.

So that in itself sucked but then him and my best-friend at the time, I’ll call her Lucy started hanging out the whole time. They were friends prior to Toby and I dating but they never really used to hang out that much. Lucy had broken up with her long-term boy-friend about 2 weeks before Toby and I broke up. I know she wasn’t in a good place but she acted selfishly and didn’t consider my feelings. It got to the point where everytime I opened instagram it was just stories of Lucy and Toby - everyone thought they were hooking up and they actually ended up going on holiday together. I don’t think anything physically happened between them but it was a betrayal of my friendship and trust from both of them. I should have walked away from the friendship then but keeping Lucy in my life felt like I somewhat had a connection to Toby. And in all honesty, I was too depressed to walk away from the friendship. Toby, as avoidants are, was so so cold during the break-up - he could barely, talk to me, could barely look me in the eye. It broke me.

I moved house with Lucy so that she was no longer living with her ex to the most disgusting house ever - we were even sharing a bed. And all the while she was hanging with Toby the whole time and this is when she went on holiday with him. Just before she went on holiday however, she started to get with an ex-fling of mine, I’ll call him Jarrod. Jarrod and I were never serious but I did really like him - we were only a fling because he had ended things, I would have for sure wanted to pursue something with him if things had been different. Lucy knew all of this - in fact they met for the first time where me and jarrod were hooking up. Lucy asked if she could get with Jarrod (just before she went on holiday with Toby) and I said yes because really what else could i say? I don’t control them. 

From then on out she kept the relationship a total secret from me - Jarrod picked her up and Toby up from airport after their trip and she still pretended it was casual. I would never know where she was, she was never at home so I was in this disgusting house by myself and she would never tell me where she was (obviously feeling too guilty to say she was with Jarrod). Things got tense between us as I was being totally over-looked as a friend and tbh it got to the point where she would just avoid me which was a totally de-humanising experience. The 3 of them started hanging out all the time and I got pushed out of the friendship group.

She eventually ended up apologising but it was empty promises and nothing changed. I then moved towns so I would only be about 1.30 hours from where we lived together and as soon as I did that she completely cut me out her life. She’s never reached out once. I tried to reconnect the friendship a couple of times (don’t ask me why, I’m anxious and her avoidance triggers all the wrong parts of me), she made it out like she wanted to re-start the friendship but when it came to actually arranging a time to meet up she ghosted me. She never wished me a happy birthday or anything. I’ve come to accept she’s a bad friend and I’ll soon be removing her socials from my life. 

So that whole experience sucked and has been drawn out over the past year and a bit. But aside from that in the January of this year, I hurt my knee and I’m awaiting to see if I need surgery. I do winter sports so that sucked because I was out for the rest of the season (again, I’ve already had surgery on that knee once a couple of years a go) and I also work on my feet so I had to take time off work. I’ve now in the last couple of days hurt my ankle and I’m back on crutches so once again cannot work which is making money difficult.

I’m in this new city which I moved to at the start of summer (away from Toby and Lucy and everyone) which has been great. But I cannot get a job that I want - I’ve been serving which is fine but I really am desperately trying to find something new. I’ve applied to nearly 100 jobs and had some interviews but nothings stuck and I’m feeling burnt out. On top of that my visa is coming to end and I have a good route to getting a new one but its certainly not guaranteed and this is contributing to me not getting a job. I don’t want to move back to the UK because the job market is just as fucked there and ultimately I think I can make more money here. 

I have zero prospects in my love life right now (although this certainly doesn’t feel like a priority) but I want to be loved more than I can ever put into words. I’ve moved house to a cheaper house with my best friend which is great and I found a sub-letter for my old place (I’m only responsible for that place until the end of Oct) but one of the other flat mates hasn’t paid his rent so the landlord is now threatening to give us 10 days notice which would mean I would have to reimburse the sub-letter. 

So yeah, nothing is really working out at the moment. Is this my sign to leave Canada? I really don’t want to. And honestly, I know I’m super fortunate in so many ways but I can’t take these knocks much more. And I just don’t really know what to do anymore.