Ah, I accidentally read over that you used free -m.

By top 3 services do you also include any programs ? For me htop itself already consumes 10 MB, what other processes are running ?

Warum?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitchens's_razor

Are you certain its actual ram usage and not reserved ? Usually when a program requests huge amounts of ram it is not given it until it actually writes to it. Try running free and check what it says.

I am A big fan of Vivaldi and its built-in email client ^^ Works like a charm for me.

Wild guess: your VPN may have a kill switch or other policy that either routes all traffic through tunnel OR kills it outright if it attempts to communicate in any other way. Which may include WiFi direct since its (unsure) an IP protocol?