I'm 20. On paper, I have international exchange experience and published research. In reality, I'm completely burnt out and terrified of being lonely forever.

Hey Reddit,

I just need to scream this into the void because keeping it inside is getting too heavy.

I turned 20 recently, and instead of feeling excited, I feel like I’m standing on the edge of a cliff, looking back at a youth that flew by way too fast, and looking forward into a future that terrifies me.

When I was a teenager, I actually felt like a teenager. I had those messy, dramatic, emotional years. My first boyfriend appeared when I was 14. But instead of being a sweet first love, that relationship left me deeply traumatized. What happened back then, at such a young age, affected me so profoundly that it built rigid walls and blocks inside me for life. It’s been 5 or 6 years since then, but that feeling of a mental block and deep mistrust has never gone away.

Then, everything shifted in an instant. When I turned 18, it’s like the universe handed me an adult suit and said, "Alright, time's up. Go work." I started working at my university, specifically in the department handling graduate and master's degree defenses. And it was an absolute living hell. Our boss was the head of the department. To us freshmen, who were basically still kids just yesterday, she would assign incredibly bizarre, impossible-to-execute, borderline unhinged tasks. She demanded the unrealistic, and whenever I couldn't pull it off, she would straight up call us abnormal. It was a non-stop psychological horror.

Because of this sedentary desk job, I gained weight, started feeling worse physically, and felt myself mentally deteriorating. I completely neglected my studies—classes became totally uninteresting to me because work had burned out any sense of purpose. Sure, it gave me massive communication experience—handling two admissions committees, dealing with hundreds of people... But at the same time, I was being completely broken. Against my own will, under constant coercion, I wrote two research papers, published four abstracts, and participated in a startup school and a hackathon. On paper, I looked like a super-successful student, but none of it came from my own desire. It was pure violence against what I actually wanted.

Right now, I have absolutely no idea how to fight my own laziness—it has become a defense mechanism that just paralyzes me until I hit critical deadlines and the ground is literally burning under my feet. It’s a vicious cycle: exhaustion-induced paralysis, intense stress, and then a panicked sprint at the very last second. I am utterly drained. And I am so, so incredibly lonely.

The biggest, most paralyzing fear I carry with me every single day is that I will end up completely alone. I am one of those people who always sincerely dreamed of having a family. I deeply want a cozy home, a loving husband, and children in the future. That’s what my soul longs for. But the harsh reality kicks me right in the gut: I just don't catch anyone's eye. I don't attract anyone. In all of my 20 years, I have never been in a relationship that lasted longer than a single month. Just one month—and then everything breaks or vanishes. The guys I let close to me later on just used me the second they saw I liked them.

I’ve been losing people my entire life. I used to think I just had a horrible personality, but looking back—I was just being betrayed. I don't talk to any of them anymore; all those bridges are burned forever.

My former best friend, whom I was close with for 9 years—we sat at the same desk since 5th grade and later lived together—fell for three of my boyfriends during that time. The moment she noticed I was interested in someone, she would immediately try to steal him away. And that put a final stop to our friendship. Period.

Another close friend just walked away when I got that job and was trying to survive. She wanted to party and hang out in crowds, and when I didn't support that lifestyle, she claimed I was acting "like a mom" and wouldn't let her do anything.

With guys, it’s even worse. One of them noticed that I liked him and made a bet on me with his friends—a wager on how long it would take to get me into bed. It didn't lead to actual sex, but everything else happened... He just took what he wanted from my infatuation.

And then there was another story—a year and a half of me being in love with and attached to a guy who was just a friend. We lived right next door to each other in the dorms and saw each other almost every day. My feelings would fade, then I'd start liking someone else, and then I'd always loop back to him. All of this was accompanied by endless partying, drinking, and in the end, cheap, supposedly "elite" flirting from his side in a "get used to it, that's life" style.

I try to understand myself through every tool possible—psychology, consumer behavior, even Tarot cards and Matrix of Fate profiles. I’ve had so many different people read for me, and every single one of them tells me the exact same thing: these are my karmic lessons. They say these karmic situations are just chasing me down. And a scream of despair is just tearing out of me: “What the fuck did I do in a past life?!” For what past sins do I have to go through this hell of devaluation and loneliness now?

Right now, I am at a new crossroads. I just finished studying in Poland on an Erasmus exchange program. It was a massive, incredible experience, but now I’m back to keep working. And ahead of me lies complete uncertainty. A move into a "new tomorrow," into a completely new city. A city where I have absolutely no one except for one single girlfriend and her fiancé. That’s it. Not another single familiar soul.

I am terrified to death that I’ll finish my studies, build a career, but at the end of the day, I’ll always return to an empty room in a foreign city where no one is waiting for me—no husband, no kids. I'm scared that nobody will ever truly see the real me—not the girl who gritted her teeth executing someone else's orders or just surviving on exchange, but just a human being who wants to be held and told that she doesn't have to carry the weight of the world on her shoulders anymore. That she deserves sincerity, a real family, and love just for who she is.

I don’t even know what I’m expecting from this post. Maybe just some reassurance that at 20, standing on the threshold of a new city and a new life, it’s not too late to change everything, find my happiness, and break this karmic cycle. Maybe I just needed to pour all this pain out loud before taking a step into this "new tomorrow."

Thanks for reading if you made it this far.