I went to a reputable btc transaction accelerator site and paid them $60 to help push the transaction through. It confirmed in less than an hour after I payed him. I am also leaving bitcoin and any new headaches from it behind.
As much as I like Bitcoin, I can't deny that current transaction fees and on-chain limitations are bad. Bitcoin can't grow without more users, which it can't handle because all blocks are full. My first Bitcoin experience was a good one back in 2015: I could make many transactions at a very low fee, which gave me a good feeling of how Bitcoin works. You can't do that now without paying a small fortune in transaction fees. And even if it's "just" a few bucks per transaction, that's too much just to try it out.
and/or to start learning about litecoin
Litecoin still has low transaction fees. For $0.01, you can make about 50 transactions. The good thing is that Litecoin works about the same as Bitcoin.