Disclaimer: This will be depressing. Read at your own peril.

How do I define success?

This seems to be the question of the decade for me. I don't know if I've been successful in my life. My instinct is to say I haven't been, but maybe I am? If success is having financial security, then I definitely have not been successful yet. If success is reaching a position of power, then no again. A position of influence perhaps? Yes, I have some small amount of influence on the world, so in that I am slightly successful, not enough to outweigh the other factors however.

Or is it happiness? If success is happiness then I am certainly not successful at all. I don't know that I've ever been happy, at least not in recent memory. I think most people define success as happiness, and it's likely they're right. Being successful then is out of my reach. Even with the people in my life who make living bearable it isn't enough to make me actually happy. I have good friends who care a great deal about me, and they too shake their heads in silence when they see me slip into bouts of depression, helplessly wondering how they can help me.

I thought loving someone would make me be happy, and it doesn't. Even with the people I loved the most in the world, and even when they loved me back, there was overwhelming sadness and bitterness for me. There was frustration, angst, worry . . . plenty of ego . . . but happiness? Perhaps it was what I caught brief glimpses of in the distance, I don't know, but whenever I arrived at that distant point it was gone long before I'd arrived.

I thought spirituality would make me happy, and it doesn't. At best, it helps make life livable, because at least I have perspective to understand that life is similar for everyone, in the respect that all of us have ups and downs, problems and fortunes. At least it helps give me the capacity to understand that life is more comfortable when we treat others and other living things with respect, and live with integrity. But comfort is not happiness, and therefore it is not success.

I thought pursuing my passions would make me happy, and it doesn't. It gives me something to do, sure, but it does little more than fill my time, and oh how I need to keep myself busy! If I don't I will be lost in the endless melancholy, the boredom of one trapped in a life they can't stand with no end in sight. If I don't keep myself busy I'll surely die. But all of my passions, writing included. do not fulfill me, they simply keep me from drowning. Staying afloat is not happiness, therefore it is not success.

And so the question is, what am I doing wrong? Am I trapped in ego? Locked behind my narcissistic tendencies? Am I so busy peering into the mirror of my own soul that I have already gone too far? Have I reached a point of no return in my self-absorption?

Or am I just not good enough? That's the depression talking, isn't it? Or is it legitimate? Am I truly deluding myself into thinking I can actually make this work? Recent developments in my life seem to suggest so... even those closest to me are beginning to withdraw their support.

So what the fuck am I doing?

Recently, it seems as if I've felt that popularity would make me happy, and it sure as fuck doesn't. It can't even distract me anymore, and it becomes an addiction, with the worst kind of withdrawals. I didn't really believe popularity would bring me happiness, but the lack of it once I've tasted it? I never imagined that would be so disheartening, so crushing to everything I've tried to do.

And I don't even know why. I don't know why is does that, I don't know why I care, and I don't know why it's happening in the first place. I don't know why I go on social media, here at GA, any of the other places I post, fishing for likes and reviews as if they will somehow make me feel better about all the crushing despair around me. I don't know why I keep trying to draw attention to myself, as if for some reason the world paying attention to me would be enough to illuminate my problems and show me the way out of this mess.

It won't. It doesn't and it won't. Nothing fucking works, and thinking popularity would was grasping at straws. There's certainly no happiness to be found anywhere in it.

And so I'm quitting that way of life. No more attention seeking. No more asking for likes, or reviews, or emails, or trying to show everyone that I can be witty, funny, and just as cool as they can be. I am leaving it behind me because it does nothing but force me into the addiction cycle.

For those of you worried about me (As I know some of you reading this will be) don't worry, I'm not going to hurt myself. If I've survived this long, I'll continue to survive until something other than me decides it's time for me to stop surviving. What I won't be doing is living, because apparently that's impossible for me. Survival is not happiness. Survival is not success.