What I mean by this is that I feel like I live my life based on what other people expect from me. I feel like I’m living for other people and my life isn’t mine.  It’s really starting to get to me. This is going to be long and I apologize in advance. 

I turned 30 last summer and I can’t help but feel as though my life is going nowhere. I live with my parents, I have no friends, I’m single and working from home because of the pandemic hasn’t helped at all. 

I just feel like expectations for me have always been higher. I only one sibling, a brother and I don’t feel like we were/are held to the same standards. For instance, if I brought home a bad grade on a test I would be in so much trouble. If he brought home a bad grade well then “it’s the best he could do”. I was never allowed out with friends on weekdays or weekends. On weekdays I had to do my homework and on weekends I had to spend time with my dad (my dad worked nights so weekends were the only time he got to see us basically, and mornings before school of course.). I was only allowed to hang with friends on Friday’s after school. I strongly believe this is why I don’t have friends, and was never able to keep any friends either because people bond over the weekends when there is more time to be together. And I was never allowed to. However if my brother screamed and cried enough he was allowed to spend time with friends whenever he wanted. I was pressured by our parents to go to college and get a job, he was not. He actually did 1 semester at community college and my dad actually expected me to do all his work for him. Mind you, I was currently in grad school full time plus I worked odd hours at a retail job for about 30ish hours a week. It didn’t matter, I was expected to help him no matter what. I refused because I had my own school work to do plus my job. My brother had to drop out of college. He is currently in his late 20s with no job. So this basically explains my childhood. I was the obedient little girl and my brother got to do whatever he wanted because my parents didn’t want to hear him scream and cry. 

Ever since my grandfather passed away, my dad has been an extremely negative person. Extremely negative is probably an understatement. It’s completely unbearable to live with. Everyone literally walks on eggshells around him. No one wants to upset him because it’s really not worth his wrath. It’s impossible to talk to him about anything, he flat out tells you he doesn’t care. But when he talks everyone has to listen and agree with him. If you disagree, he sees it as you saying he’s wrong and WW3 begins. He constantly puts down my mom’s side of the family and he is extremely annoyed when she talks to her brothers. My cousin on my moms side is actually getting married next month and my dad flipped out like you wouldn’t believe and told us all that we aren’t going. My aunt told my mom she’d be upset if my mom didn’t go to her son’s wedding so my mom said she would go alone. My dad stopped to talking to her. My mom doesn’t want to deal with my dad’s BS so she called my uncle and told him everything and now she’s not going to the wedding. My dad still isn’t speaking to her. He is blaming COVID for the reason, but then when he talks to his siblings he tells them that COVID was made up by the government. 

My dad doesn’t just piss all over my mom’s family, he does it to his own family as well. My cousin on his side recently had her second child and now my dad is annoyed with her because “she just has babies so she can get gifts”. He is actually annoyed that me and my mom bought a 1 year old birthday gifts. He constantly complains about my other cousin my because my aunt is upset that he has to work (he works outside in a cemetery and we were getting a lot of snow where I live so she was a little worried about him). My dad is annoyed with this because “no one cared about him when he worked”. 

My aunt also takes about 98% of my cousins 
paycheck because things were rough for the 2 of them when my grandfather passed away (they lived with him and he supported them financially). My dad constantly says that he feels bad for my cousin because he has no life because of my aunt. I feel like I have no life because of him. If he is mad about people having babies and getting married, there’s no way he’d be okay with me dating. He has spoken to my mother in so long because she wanted to go to my cousin’s wedding - how is he going to feel of i meet someone on a dating app? He may cut me off entirely. 

And then it just makes me feel like who would want me? A potential guy I date, would have to deal with a psychopath as a father in law. Any differences in opinion and I’ll never hear the end of it. And when my parents die, I’m most likely going to be supporting my brother financially since he seems to not want a job and my parents have given up trying to get him to get a job - what guy would want to financially support their brother in law? So this right here just makes me feel like I’m not living my life for me, but for other people. 

And then there’s work. I get it, I’m not the boss. I have to listen and do what I’m told.  But I just feel like people do so many unnecessary things that make the job go on for hours. Like there’s this one person there and she’ll ask you to do something and it’s like no big deal really, but once you do it it sort snowballs into more. Like why couldn’t you ask me for everything at the beginning? It literally would take me 5 minutes to do exactly what you want, but because you’re asking for things little by little it’s taking 4 hours to do. I know I’m lucky to have a job, but it’s stupid little things like this that frustrate me. Working from home has been a nightmare, for financial reasons I live my parents. They depend on me too much. I have to fix the router/WiFi issues for them. I have to set up Zoom stuff for their doctor appointments. Any time there’s a technology issue they come to me. My dad has been referring to me as being off from work. It’s just frustrating. I feel like I’m being pulled in a million different directions and I just need a moment of peace for myself and it never seems to come. 

I know I’m only 30 but I just feel so old and like my life over/coming to an end. I feel like I do so much for other people but no one does anything for me. Honestly all I want to do is lay in bed in the dark. I know I can’t do that and I have to keep pushing through. I just feel like I can’t live up to everyone’s expectations.  Anyone feel the same? Went through the same? Any advice?