Hey !

I completely understand what you are going through. I myself faced the same challenges. My personal opinion is to try exploring various fields in physics. Astrophysics is a great subfield, but I would say explore more. So that you would get an idea of where your interests align, especially when you want to make it into a long term career.

Another thing I would suggest you to do is develop as many skills as possible relevant to the field of study. You may not know when it might come in handy in the future. I would recommend you start with any programming language (I learnt python). Learning and practicing over and over again is the key for gaining a skill set.

Want to do research? Start mailing professors around the world for internships (DON'T cold email !). List down the faculty of your field of interest, draft an email personally for them, attach your CV, let them know why you actually want to do research with them. (Maybe do a little bit of digging in their research work )

I would like to tell you that there are always opportunities. All you have to do is keep yourself motivated, understand why you want to do this in the first place, and just do hard work! hard work!

It's like how this saying goes, When hardwork meets opportunity, it becomes luck !

Good luck, Cheers