I'm in my 30s and I have to say my late teens and early twenties were the hardest years. That period is hard for most people (though many hide it well), it's also a period of intense growth, often loneliness, and made sooo much harder with an invisible disability like a stutter. My speech was so bad in the 17-21 year period and it affected everything. I even tried therapy for the first time at 19 because I couldn't talk in class, and my career services tried to steer me towards lab work (due to my speech) but I was truly awful at lab. I had panic attacks about my professional future and loneliness all the time, it's painful to think back to it. It got better over time without me doing anything special other than committing to living through each day best as I could, sometimes it was just about minimizing harm to future me. At times I was like wtf I'm just wasting my youth! but later learned most people my age were also suffering though in different ways. There are brighter days ahead and you have to keep chugging along. No day is a waste. If you think, is this it??? the answer is no. This is the hard shit and you are already making it through, you are enough, you are learning and growing every day even if you feel like you're not. By the end of my twenties I figured shit out. I always wanted a family and an interesting job I was good at and helped people. Somehow, I ended up becoming a civil rights lawyer. No thanks to my college career services, but big thanks to my early retail employers for hiring the college kid who couldn't say their own name or "welcome" or "thank you." I've now got a family, feel loved, feel like I'm in the right job even, but none of this felt remotely like a possibility at 21.