Update to this thread, in case anyone is interested.
My living situation continues to be bad, but my mental health has seen an enormous improvement, despite working from home in the environment I previously described. On the plus side, I haven't been laid off and I think I'm unlikely to be in the next few months. I was accepted everywhere I applied, and while I still have a couple weeks to formally decide, I'm probably turning down MIT for a position at another R1 university with an advisor who seems better at mentoring and is doing more interesting work. Being in a place where I'm going to be able to afford to live alone on a grad student stipend (and still save!) is going to help too, I think.
I was in a really bad place late last year, and I'm very grateful for all of your kind words. It's just within the last month or so, as the realization that I've
actually managed to carve myself a way out of this mess has really sunk in, that that's lifted. I'm spending a good chunk of my free time lately reading papers, textbooks, and old notes, and I couldn't be happier to be engaging with this kind of material again.
Between my working income up to August, $5,000 I loaned to my parents a year or two ago, and a ~$3,000 tax refund coming in 2021, I should be able to pay the very last of the debt off by March of next year without putting much towards it after summer. My progress is in this thread:
https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/throw-down-the-gauntlet/student-loan-challenge-(2020-edition)/. If my parents can find the money to pay me back (which they said they were hoping to do in March, but natch), I may finish everything but the interest-free loan before then. Next month my private loan, originally at $65k, will be gone, and then I'll be banking money to pay the federal loans, which are going into deferment with interest waived courtesy of the government. I'm about to be free of this $1,000 a month liability, and will have enough cash on hand to live on for about 6 months without it. No more sword of Damocles. I'm already sleeping better than I have for months.
Anyway, just wanted to give an update and say thank you.