All The Things They Said Would Matter

You wake up in the house you paid off early. Hardwood floors. Quiet appliances. A stocked fridge. A toothbrush that vibrates. Everything clean, modern, curated. You check your phone. Notifications, likes, emails. People wanting things. People admiring things. A few people pretending to care. All of it noise. You reply, because it’s habit. You smile when you should. You do what’s expected.

And still, somehow, you feel absolutely fucking nothing.

They told you success would feel like warmth. Like belonging. Like peace. But it doesn’t. It feels like fluorescent lights and white noise. Like stale coffee and expensive silence. It feels like you climbed the ladder only to realize it’s leaning against the wrong goddamn wall, and the view from the top is just more walls, more ladders, more people smiling through their teeth.

I did everything right. School. Service. Degrees. Marriage. Career. Body. I even learned how to fake joy in public. To shake hands like a man. To lift like a savage. To suffer like a monk. I followed the script like a good little soldier. And now I’m here. In the big house. In the nice car. With the LinkedIn title and the defined jawline and the wife who doesn’t touch me unless she’s checking for a heartbeat.

And it’s all so achingly hollow.

I walk the miles. I count the macros. I post the progress shots, the veins snaking down my biceps like I’ve conquered something. But I haven’t. I’ve just mastered the art of appearing functional. That’s what success really is: performance. A daily audition for a role you’re already tired of playing.

There’s no relief in arriving. Only the realization that arrival is a lie.

What they don’t tell you is that the climb isn’t about reaching anything. It’s about distracting yourself from the truth—that you’re broken in a way that can’t be fixed. That the validation you sought from others is really a stand-in for the love you never got from your mother. Or your father. Or God. Or yourself.

And when you finally do make it, when the applause fades and the inbox is empty and you’re left alone with the echo of your own heartbeat, you start to wonder if any of it was worth it.

You can bench 225 now. Great. Your abs look like they were carved out of ash. Wonderful. You have discipline. You have focus. You’ve optimized your life into something resembling art. But the gallery is empty. No one’s coming. The only person who sees it is you, and even you aren’t sure it’s beautiful anymore.

Because beneath the lean muscle and the clean resume and the sharp wardrobe is still the same boy, kneeling behind a locked door, wondering why no one came looking for him.

You realize you don’t miss people. You miss who you wanted them to be. The idea of them. The potential. You miss the version of yourself who still believed in something.

But belief is for children. And you’re not a child anymore. You’re a man with a mortgage and a dead stare and a heart that doesn’t trust joy.

You start to fantasize about disappearing. Not in the melodramatic way, but in the slow fade—changing your number, selling your car, moving to some nameless city where no one knows you were ever anything at all. A man with no past, no expectations, no curated image to maintain. Just… gone. Like a ghost who finally stopped pretending to be real.

And yet, you don’t. You stay. You show up. You do your reps. You reply to texts. You keep it together. Because that’s what men like you do. You suffer well. Quietly. Elegantly.

And no one notices.

Not even you, sometimes.

So you tell yourself that tomorrow will feel different. That the next goal will matter. That maybe if you cut down to 8% body fat, or finally get that third master’s degree, or learn Spanish, or whatever bullshit you invent at 2 a.m., maybe then the weight will lift. Maybe then you’ll feel like a man who’s earned the right to be okay.

But you won’t. Because the game is rigged.

Success is not the absence of suffering. It’s the camouflage we wrap around our wounds to make them palatable.

And some of us get so good at hiding the pain, we forget what it ever felt like to be whole.