Feeling Trapped at 30 - Need Advice, Assalamu Alaikum
Assalamu Alaikum. I can’t keep going like this. I’m 30 and still living in a toxic, emotionally draining home that’s wearing me down day by day. The mood here is always belittling - every remark, every fight, every little situation eats away at my energy, my focus, and my will. I wake up feeling trapped, like I’ve been stuck in the same place for years with no way forward. I live in a small mountain town where work is only seasonal. That’s all I’ve ever known, and it feels like a loop: short-term jobs → no stability → impossible to rent long-term because places go to tourists → stuck at home. And it keeps getting worse. Lately I’m thinking maybe I should move to the city for good. There would at least be more chances there. I have a close friend in the city, and my wife-to-be - she’s from around here - just finished nursing school and will start working in the city around mid-January. She’s already looking for an apartment. Maybe we could live together… but I don’t have stable work, and the whole idea feels huge and terrifying. Honestly, I don’t know where to begin. I only finished high school, I don’t have experience in typical full-time jobs, and whenever I try to plan the future I freeze. I don’t know what to search for, which path to choose, or how to break this cycle. I feel stuck, like a failure, and without courage. I just want a normal life: a home where I’m not walking on eggshells, a job that lasts longer than three months, a bit of peace of mind. Instead I’m 30 and still caught in family dynamics that feel like a nightmare, stuck in a town that keeps pulling me down. I don’t know what to do anymore. I don’t know how to get out of this. I just needed to say it somewhere. JazakAllahu khair for reading. A bit about my work history and skills: over the years I’ve done seasonal roles such as hotel receptionist (emails, check-ins/outs, cash handling, admin, public-facing problem solving), sales assistant in an electronics shop (TVs, computers, smartphones - orders, stock, customer support), and working at an IQOS store handling store duties, sales, cash register and operations. I also have a long-standing passion for IT (not programming) - building desktop PCs and troubleshooting hardware/software for friends and family since my teens. My wife-to-be will start at a hospital in the city in January, but she has told me she hopes to stay close to her parents and thinks of the mountains as home. I’m trying to reconcile that with what I need to be okay. Any advice from brothers and sisters who’ve moved from small towns, found stable work, or managed family stress would mean a lot. Please keep me in your duas.