21M | I thought getting my dream job would finally be the fresh start I needed. Instead, I feel like everything has been falling apart.

A few months ago, I landed a good job at a big MNC. I genuinely believed this would be the beginning of a new chapter in my life.

Instead, ever since joining, reality has been very different. One expectation after another has been crushed by the corporate machinery. The excitement I had slowly turned into exhaustion, and it's already taken a huge toll on my mental health. I kept telling myself I'd adjust, that things would get better with time.

Then an incident from two years ago resurfaced, and it honestly shattered whatever emotional stability I had left.

Back in school, I liked a girl let's call her rita(fake name keeping things anonymous) . I never confessed because I was shy and honestly just kept those feelings to myself. Even through college, that crush stayed somewhere in the background. We went to different colleges, but we still stayed in touch as friends. Looking back, I was definitely the one putting in more effort to keep the conversations alive. I know that probably comes across as naive or even a bit creepy, but I genuinely didn't know any better at the time.

Eventually, my best friend (who also knew her) told her how I felt before I was ready. Since the cat was already out of the bag, I confessed myself.

What I didn't know was that she had already started dating someone from her college .

She never mentioned it .

For about a week, we tried seeing where things could go. I was in my third year of engineering and had my own goals and responsibilities, and after thinking it through, I felt it wasn't something I could realistically commit to. She had her own reasons too, though she never really shared them. We mutually ended it on good terms and just went back to being old school friends.

At least... that's what I believed.

Two years later, I found out that her boyfriend had existed that entire week when we were trying things out.

That realization honestly hit me like a freight train.

It's not because I still have feelings for her—I don't. It's because I unknowingly became the third person in someone else's relationship, something I have always hated the idea of.

If I had known she was already committed, I would have shut everything down the moment I confessed. There wouldn't have been a week of "trying." I would never knowingly involve myself in someone else's relationship.

As soon as I learned the truth, I reached out to her boyfriend and told him everything from my side because I didn't want to unknowingly continue being part of a lie. Whether that was the right decision or not is debatable, but I couldn't live with myself if I stayed silent.

The part I'm struggling with isn't guilt over my actions—I genuinely didn't know. It's the feeling that my trust in people has taken a huge hit. I keep replaying everything in my head, wondering how someone could let me walk into that situation without telling me the truth.

Objectively, I know I wasn't the one who crossed a boundary intentionally.

Emotionally, though, I still feel stained by it.

Maybe under normal circumstances I would've processed this and moved on. But after months of feeling beaten down at work and watching my expectations repeatedly die, this revelation was the final blow. It has genuinely shattered my emotional well-being, and I don't know how to move past something I never knowingly chose to be a part of.

Thank You for reading till here I do realize this post has become somewhat long but yea i really needed to write this down so feel free to out suggestion am I thinking too, how to move on, what to do next....

Once again Thanks