I honestly don’t know where to go from here. From the outside looking in and on paper, I have all my shit together.

I had a nasty drunk driving incident 4 years back and was my wake up call to get my shit together. I’ve been clean and sober for almost four years now. No alcohol, no drugs, no weed, and not so much as a cigarette or energy drink.

I have a very clean and balanced diet. I workout regularly. And I take my antidepressant religiously never missing a day.

I went from being broke to pulling a 6-figure income in less than four years at a great job. I recently purchased a half a million dollar home. I’ve traveled the world. Most recently just spent two weeks in Hawaii.
And even got married two years ago. 

Textbook Cinderella story.

Yet… somehow I’m broken. 

The episodes used to only come once a month at most. Then the darkness would come once a week. Now at least once a day or the whole day I feel that dark void come over and I start rationalizing how “ending it” is a logical idea.

And it’s embarrassing. I don’t know where in the past 4 years I started losing myself, but I feel like I’m just watching myself from a third person point of view just going through the motions of what I once dreamt up as being the perfect life.

I thought my biggest problem were drugs and alcohol. And for  while in early sobriety, that seemed to be the case. I was productive, stable moods, and this new found mental clarity had me taking on the world.

As I chased “happiness”, I lost my friends, passions, and personality while digging in at work. I found myself working 80 hours a week back-to-back-back. And a 50 hour work week became a slow week. I devoured non-fiction books. Learned a massive amount of new work skills that propelled me to get a huge promotion that tripled my salary.

And now I’m fucking miserable. I backed myself into a corner of societal defined success. My wife loves it because I bring home a lot of money and she can chases her idea of happiness. My job profits of my skills. And as long as I’m clean and sober, my family assumes I should be happy.

I go home everyday not knowing what to do because I forgot what makes me happy. I say yes to every request and favor people ask me for because I was convinced that was the right thing to do. 

I wake up at 2:00 a.m. in the morning some days for a glass of water and by the time I make it back to bed my eyes are streaming tears as I realize this life I locked myself into and invested so much time and work to achieve has absolutely crushed me. 

When I ask for helped, it’s dismissed as a joke or I get shamed into guilt for complaining  when it looks so great from the outside. Even professional counselors and therapists have disregarded and don’t think I have a problem.

I just have no idea where or how to get help before I do something stupid in search of a permanent solution.