Was recently forced to resign after being blindsided with an ultra aggressive noncompete/bonus clawback a year into my boutique IB analyst job. Now unemployed and feeling hopeless

Hi everyone - posting this from a burner account so I don’t dox myself.

To make a long story short, I was a year into first job out of college in IB at a small boutique (12 FTE) in NYC. In the beginning of May, I was completely blindsided when I was handed the craziest noncompete in the beginning of May. Without going into too much detail, if I signed it, I’d basically be completely screwed if I ever wanted to leave…. Many points in the document essentially bar me from getting any job in finance whatsoever (let alone IB) for up to two years….

I obviously pushed back on signing this absolute BS, but they responded by locking me out of all of my works accounts and banned me from coming to work until I either signed it as is or resigned.

There’s a lot of details I’m leaving out to so this isn’t a million paragraphs long but I essentially decided to just quit on the last day May. Since I’m not from NY and my lease renewal was coming up, it just didn’t make sense to resign if I wasn’t gonna have a job. I moved out of my apartment in NYC last week and am now back in my hometown feeling kind of hopeless.

I’ve already been aggressively trying to lateral since January because the culture is absolutely abysmal but have had no luck getting past the super day phase. I’m now starting to update my resume after officially quitting 2 weeks ago and honestly am not feeling optimistic at all.

Would really appreciate any advice right now or hear from others who’ve gone through something similar. This entire experience with both this situation and my company in general has absolutely crushed my self esteem and health, so any perspective would be greatly appreciated.