So it is said. But we all have different ideas of what consititues success. For some, it might be having millions of dollars. For others, success might be general happiness or good health. For many, it’s some combination of the three. For my cat, I think it’s an unreasonable number of drink bottle caps stashed under the fridge; there’s no other earthly reason for them to continue to amass there.

During my recent several-year hiatus from writing due to poor mental health, I managed – against all probability and potentially several laws of nature – to achieve a degree of what others seem to perceive as ‘success’. This improvement from being quite low on the societal totem pole has contributed to a new, if somewhat vague, sense of a right to exist, a right to a place in the world. If one lacks general confidence in their right take up space in the world, external validation can be as essential to life as oxygen.

While it’s nice to breathe a little easier, it’s been complicated noticing how people’s behaviour has changed towards me during this shift in trajectory. No one ever thought I’d amount to anything. I was reminded of my unmet potential for decades. In fact even a cousin who went to my former high school was lectured about not turning out like I did. My improved circumstances in life has shocked everyone I know. I’ve had everything from disbelief and dismissiveness to over-the-top kindness and congratulation, and none of it feels comfortable. Negative responses have undermined who I thought I had in my corner and positive responses seem focused on entirely the wrong things. None of it reflects how I feel I have grown over the years.

I’m yet to hear any praise for maintining my hygiene, making my bed, improving my nutrition or developing greater emotional independence and stability; things that felt six worlds away from achievable not that long ago. I am getting no public recognition for having washed hair (actually, I tell a lie, I regularly get compliments on getting my hair done/cut/coloured when in fact I’ve merely washed it). No one is offering me a place on a discussion panel to talk about how I now clean my room every day and I certainly don’t get called an inspiration, or get commended on my leadership in proactively managing my mental health. Rude.

That’s not to say I’m not receiving recognition – it’s an uncomfortably regular occurrence now for me to have another person saying nice things at me while my brain works furiously to determine the appropriate amount to smile and how long to maintain it before I am allowed to stop. Too big a smile and I might look proud or egotistical, but too small and I seem dismissive or unappreciative of their pointed and unsought after attention. The experience is, I imagine, somewhat like encountering a primate in the wild and not being able to recall which species see smiling as a threat. Paradoxically, while validation is my life blood, positive attention is also my kryptonite. The very fine line between validation and praise, where I find existence bearable, is only perceptible by the many-coned eyes of the mantis shrimp.

My difficulty with accepting positive comments about having things like a ‘better’ job, earning more money, a newer car or a home that has hot water which runs consistently (finally!) is reflective of my overall difficulty with accepting that I have anything more than a laughably insignificant influence over those outcomes. Luck and the MUEs are at play more often than not and I’m the poorly designed NPC carrying out the code they write. What’s interesting is how society as a whole treats you based on the roll of Chance’s dice, or a sideways glance from Chaos.

An act of benevolence (or pity, or plain boredom) from Chance in the form of an offer for a temp job was the catalyst for the shift in my life. It was a job that I had recently been told by someone in the sector I would be unlikely to ever get. I jumped at the opportunity (after arranging for unpaid leave from my existing job) and it all went from there. When that short-term role was over, I was encouraged to apply for other positions at the organisation. When I gave notice at my old job, my manager mentioned he’d been worried that the temp gig would lead to me leaving. He essentially signalled that while he saw my capability and potential and hadn’t done anything to support my career progression, he also didn’t want anyone else to. The employer version of licking the top of a muffin you don’t want but also don’t want anyone else to have.

Well more fool him, because now I’m working twice as many hours each week and am a great candidate for having a stroke at my desk one morning. Seriously though, I’m getting to do work that I never dreamed I would, my work is trusted and my skills sought out by colleagues. I’ve risen through the ranks at a respectable rate and in the process am now earning enough money to fund an existence in which I don’t need to worry about choosing between medication or fuel for the car. For me, it’s living the dream. Actually no, it feels like waking up from a long period of being only half awake and just living again. Finally, after over a decade of struggling with trauma, health issues, mental health issues, disability, grief, poverty and general inertia, I feel like I’ve been able to pull the brake lever on the out-of-control trolley car I’ve been trapped in. Things are by no means easy and likely never will be (nor do I need them to be), but I feel more in control and capable.

But of course, that is where the danger lies, isnt it? Because I’ve taken great pains to explain how much we are all at the mercy of Luck in the form of the MUEs. Getting that first job offer that kicked things off was nothing to do with me. I had applied for many jobs there many, many times and never received a response, let alone the courtesy of a rejection. I never got to see a crack of light in the door through which to thrust a foot until the offer fell in my lap out of nowhere. I didn’t do anything different to get that opportunity. There was no reason for me to go from not being a good candidate for those jobs one day to being offered one I didn’t apply for the next. It was luck.

If it wasn’t bad form to refuse kind words from others about ‘how far Ive come’ or ‘how much I’ve achieved’ or how ‘proud they are’ of me, I’d set people straight about my actual contribution to my current circumstances. Worse still is hearing from people that say I deserve this ‘success’. Why is that? Who gets to say who deserves what and by what measure? In saying someone deserves a good outcome, aren’t we also then supporting the idea that life is fair and rewards people? Does it also then punish the unworthy? Does that mean that until things started to turn around for me I just wasn’t deserving enough?

Either way, I’m still not comfortable referring to my recent progress as success, but if I was to call it that, I’m also a bit miffed that I don’t get to use it as revenge against anyone. Whose nose can I rub these so-called achievements in? Don’t misunderstand me, I have been wronged in my time! I’ve been belittled and dismissed and insulted and underestimated and scorned and rejected like a DEI hire at the White House. Maybe so much so that no highlights stand out and the constant stream of it just faded into background noise. Nevertheless, here I am, with people around me expressing varying levels of admiration and satisfaction at the turns my life has taken. I have no choice but to keep fake-smiling through nice words and being mindful that good, bad or otherwise, this is all just a numbers game.