Syntax Error inside npm.js, also npm keeps trying to use v10.19.0 of nodejs, even after I update it and I don’t know why

If this is a stupid question, I am sorry, but my code was literally working fine 2 days ago. Load it up today and I get all this bollocks. I am new to node and npm. So I am sorry if this is all just down to version management.

I am on linux ubuntu. I tested it in a new clean project, same error. Even tried to do something (literally just to check version number) in the terminal with npm, same error. I’ve done some searches which of some seem credible but I can’t even do anything with npm at the moment so I can’t even uninstall it or clean cache. Yes, I’ve tried with sudo.

npm does not support Node.js v10.19.0
You should probably upgrade to a newer version of node as we
can't make any promises that npm will work with this version.
You can find the latest version at https://nodejs.org/
/usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/lib/npm.js:32
  #unloaded = false
  ^

SyntaxError: Invalid or unexpected token
    at Module._compile (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:723:23)
    at Object.Module._extensions..js (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:789:10)
    at Module.load (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:653:32)
    at tryModuleLoad (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:593:12)
    at Function.Module._load (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:585:3)
    at Module.require (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:692:17)
    at require (internal/modules/cjs/helpers.js:25:18)
    at module.exports (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/lib/cli.js:22:15)
    at Object.<anonymous> (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/bin/npm-cli.js:2:25)
    at Module._compile (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:778:30)