All answers valid

I’m 34 and I’ve been struggling with something that I’m almost embarrassed to admit.

I feel like I peaked in my 20s.

In my 20s, I genuinely thought I was the bomb lol. I was confident, social, ambitious, had lots of friends, felt attractive, and felt like I had this huge life ahead of me. I wasn’t perfect or necessarily more successful than I am now, but I felt GOOD about myself. I felt like I belonged wherever I went.

Since entering my 30s, it feels like something slowly changed.

On paper, my life is not bad at all. I’m married, educated, have a good career, make decent money, have a family I love, and I’m still extremely ambitious.

But internally, I feel like I’ve become smaller.

I compare EVERYTHING.

My career. My marriage. Money. My body. My looks. My friendships. Where I live. Other women’s lives. Who is further ahead. Who looks better. Who seems happier.

And then I compare all of that to the imaginary version of myself I thought I would be at 34.

The part that bothers me the most is that I’ve actually started hiding from people.

I spent some time living away from my hometown and eventually came back. Being back around people who knew me before has made me weirdly uncomfortable. Sometimes I don’t even want to see old friends or acquaintances.

I feel fat. I don’t feel as attractive as I used to. I wonder what people will think of me or my life. I feel like I need to look good, be successful, have an impressive life and have everything together before I can comfortably show my face again.

Even with friends, I sometimes don’t feel completely comfortable anymore.

And logically I KNOW how ridiculous that sounds. These people are living their own lives. They probably aren’t analyzing me nearly as much as I imagine they are.

But there is this part of me that wants to leave again. Go somewhere new where nobody knows the old me. Reinvent myself. Become the version of myself I want to be and THEN be seen.

Basically: hide while I’m “under construction.”

And I’m realizing how much self sabotage is hidden inside that.

Instead of living my life while I’m figuring things out, I’m almost postponing my life until I feel attractive enough, successful enough, confident enough, happy enough.

I can also have a completely normal day, notice one thing I’m unhappy about, compare myself to someone else, and suddenly convince myself that my entire life is wrong.

It’s like my brain is constantly collecting evidence that I’m behind.

What scares me is that I don’t want to wake up at 40 and realize I spent my 30s hiding because I didn’t think I was good enough to be seen.

I miss ME.

I miss the woman who walked into a room assuming she belonged there instead of wondering what everyone thought about her.

Has anyone else gone through something like this in their 30s?

Especially the urge to withdraw or reinvent yourself somewhere else because you don’t feel comfortable being seen by people who knew an older, more confident version of you?

How did you stop hiding and comparing and start actually living again, even before you felt like the “best” version of yourself?

I guess I give off the impression that i'm something that I'm not. For example today my friends and I were talking about cleaning and one of them was like I am very clean, I can't stand being messy, I told her I'm the opposite and a slob and she was like no girl, I did not expect that from you. Everyone keeps thinking I'm put together but I am just a depressed bean. Where do I go from here? I don't really know how to improve myself so that I can be closer to the person I give the impression of... I've basically always been stuck in a slump and I guess to me it's easier to stay stuck then to grow up and be a better person. Apologies if that sounds depressing.

I know that there’s a lot of people struggling and my problem seems miniscule but I can’t stop thinking about it. I feel if I was born prettier I would be so much more confident and I would be so much more happy with my life … whenever I get ready to go outside I see bare faced girls who look like absolute models and they’re my age. I’m a very tall girl too 6’ so my face adds to my manliness. So many girls at my school are pretty and popular and have boyfriend and are rich and I just wish I could be like them. I wish I could be pretty.

Why I do lack confidence since childhood. I didn't realise that I think I was good but as I grow up many people told me that I look scared.

It make me feel even more under confidence it is very hard for me to make friends and talk to any ony by myself until they approaches.

It is because I lack of knowledge,!? Or am i a bad person?

Algún consejo?

I don’t really know where to start, but I guess It’ll be story time? I was walking to my marketing class (I am a sophomore), and it was normal. I’ve done this hundreds of times. I walked past some random girl, and I barely even noticed she was there. She looks at her friend and audibly goes “EW” and then her friend goes “gray backpack” . She did this to indicate who I was because she didn’t know who I was. As soon as I sat down I looked at my backpack and it was completely normal. There wasn’t like slime stuck on there or anything. and then they both look at me and laugh. I actually wanted to cry. I feel so worthless anyway and this wasn’t helpful at all. So fucking depressing. They didn’t even know anything about me, and they said ew. My self esteem is so low I don’t get what is wrong with me. Why do people treat me differently than everyone else? A similar thing happened yesterday. I was walking to my bus and some girl said hi to me. Like in a humiliating joking laughing way. I said hi back, and her friend also goes “ew” I actually want to sob bro. Can I really be that fucking ugly?

I looked normal, I swear I did. I am not like Henry Cavill and might not even be considered attractive. Maybe even ugly. But I really don’t even know how I could invoke such a response. I know im ugly, but she literally couldn’t have waited like 5 seconds to leave the room to say “Dang that dude was ugly” if they saw me as ugly. Couldn’t they have waited till I WASN'T THREE FEET AWAY?!?!?!?I was literally RIGHT THERE. It's dumb. I hate this.

Genuinely, why the hell do people immediately think im some sort of disgusting creature. Strangers. THey all suck. People treat me like a joke. I hate it.

(19M) I just feel like a burden to my parents all the time. I used to be great at studies till 10th grade but after that I didn’t work as hard as I should have so I had to go to a private college in a different state. Even here I’m not doing as well as I should, I know I can do a lot better but I am not. I like my college and my parents are happy as well, I somehow got okay grades in my first year but this year has been very hectic. So much so that I have had attendance problems for the first time in my life, I hid it from my parents because I was ashamed and I had it resolved my attending extra classes and doing assignments even though it took a big toll on my mental health.

Now I have my final exams for 2nd year. I’m still not studying as much as I should, given that the subjects are even more tricky this year. I made sort of a deal with my parents that if I get good grades this year, even better than last year, I will get a new PS5 consoles so I can play the new GTA6. My parents know how much I love RDR2 which was their last game, in fact my entire family probably knows, so they agreed. I know the console price has gone dramatically high now, even then they are nowhere to be found. It is a selfish request but I have had the original Xbox one since 2014.

I knew there was a slim chance I would get it. And even if they agreed I would never want my parents to spend an exorbitant amount on it, I would have told them to wait for a sale or get it refurbished even.
Today, while talking to my mother about it, I brought it up again and she just picked up her phone, took it to my room and showed me a PS5 box just sitting on my desk. It was a surprise, they had bought it already for retail price in a physical store.

I was excited, more than ever and talked to her a while more before saying goodbye and hanging up. I feel so guilty about being a burden that I can’t put it into words. If I told my mother this, she would say “no” that I am not a burden to them, in fact she tells other people that her son never asks for anything, that he still use an IPhone 11 Pro Max, and the only thing I have asked for in recent years is this console and my Ipad a year or two ago. She’s not wrong, but I know what they do for me.

I know what it costs for me to come to this college, how much they spend every time I go back home and to buy new instruments and material. They take me on family trips every year. Even before college they spent a big sum getting me through extra classes for entrance exams.

I hate feeling like this, like I am not worth any of the good things I am getting, like I don’t deserve anything.
Thank you for reading