I’ll be turning 29 in few days, a software engineer with around 8 years in the field. I’ve never been afraid of working hard. That’s probably what makes this whole situation even more frustrating I have the willingness to work, but I have absolutely no idea where to channel it anymore. A few years ago, my dad got into heavy debt. We weren’t on good terms after I found out about it. There was a lot of drama at home around money, and he would keep asking me for money, saying that if I helped him one more time, he could fix everything once and for all and there would finally be some peace at home. I just wanted the situation to end. We had a house, but my dad eventually sold it to clear some of his debt. So today I don’t have an asset sitting somewhere that I can sell to get myself out of this. At some point I thought I could solve everything through trading. I started trading aggressively. I had around ₹40L (~$40k) of my own savings and I lost it all. Then I took loan, thinking I could recover the losses and fix everything. I ended up losing around ₹60L (~$60k) of borrowed money too. I’m still carrying roughly ₹60L of debt today. I know how stupid that sounds. I know I made those decisions. I’m not trying to escape responsibility for them. But I also want to make it clear that it wasn’t really about wanting to get rich. I was desperately trying to fix a family situation that had become unbearable at home. Since then I’ve been trying to rebuild everything. I’ve focused on my career and started applying aggressively for better-paying jobs. And somehow I keep getting close. Last year I had an interview where literally everything seemed aligned. I made it through the rounds and thought I had a real shot. Then in the last stage they suddenly asked things completely unrelated to the role, I got thrown off, couldn’t solve it, and failed the round. It keeps on happening again and again, getting to the point where I can almost see the finish line and then somehow missing it. Recently I had three opportunities: One suddenly reduced the CTC. Another company got acquired and froze recruitment. The third interview actually happened, and then I got ghosted. Then there was also a potentially big freelance project. A friend’s friend wanted to build a large project. I quoted ₹20L (~$20k), he seemed okay with it, wanted to negotiate a little and wanted to meet. I thought, maybe this is finally it. Then on the day we were supposed to meet, he said he was out of town, and since then his interest seems to have disappeared. And then there’s trading again. After losing so much in trading my own account, I eventually started trying prop-firms ( you pay a small fee to trade on demo account but get profits as actual payout ) because I thought it would let me trade without risking huge amounts of my own capital. I actually became profitable and got a payout. For a moment I thought maybe I’d finally figured it out. Then I started blowing these prop-firm accounts again. Financially, I’m now in a horrible position. My monthly outflow is roughly ₹70k (~$700) more than my income, and I have around one month of money left to keep covering that gap. I don’t have assets to fall back on. And almost nobody knows about this. Apart from one friend. He’s actually helped me with some money too, and I’m dying to return it. But I’m not able to generate any surplus right now, which makes me feel even worse. On top of all this, my 9-year relationship is about to end. So right now I’m sitting here with debt, no financial runway, career uncertainty, trading not working, a relationship falling apart, and barely enough mental energy to function. I’m so exhausted that I’m struggling to focus even on my current job. I sit in front of my work knowing I need to perform, but my mind keeps going back to the same questions: How am I going to get out of this? What should I even be doing? Where should I put my energy? I feel like screaming sometimes. Like I want to break things just to get all of this pressure out of my head. And the weird thing is, I’m not afraid of working hard. Give me 12 hours of work every day and I’ll do it. Just tell me what direction to work in. That’s what I don’t have anymore. I’ve also tried to stay positive through all of this. Manifestation, visualization, affirmations, trying to believe that things are finally going to turn around. And sometimes I genuinely believe it. Last few weeks I was actually happy. A client opportunity, jobs, trading, for a brief moment I thought things were finally moving in my favour. Then within days, everything started falling apart again. It feels like I’m in a room full of closed doors, with water filling up to the ceiling. I’m barely keeping my face above the water, getting those few inches of breathing space. And I keep thinking: If just one door opens, the water will start going down. But they keep staying closed. I know there are people in much worse situations than mine. I know my debt isn’t the worst thing that can happen to someone. I know I still have a job, I’m relatively young, I have skills, etc. But knowing that doesn’t magically change how I feel. In my current mental space, I feel like I’m in a very, very bad place. I’m not looking for people to tell me “stay positive.” I’ve been trying. I’m also not looking for sympathy. I genuinely want to hear from people who’ve been through a period where several parts of their life seemed to collapse at the same time. How did you figure out which direction to go? How did you keep working when you were mentally exhausted? How did you rebuild your belief in yourself after repeatedly getting so close and then failing? And how do you keep hope alive without just lying to yourself? Because right now, I feel completely clueless.
I used LLM to structure the post, as I log everything there :) submitted by /u/maknom_66
Originally posted by u/maknom_66 on r/AskMen