Does anyone else feel like they will never be happy? I do. It's not a rhetorical question. Make no mistake, I certainly feel happiness. In fact, I've been so happy recently that I wasn't thinking about any of this at all. I was going to make a video about the VMAs, this award ceremony that just went down. I was just going to go through and say like, oh, this outfit is crazy. And so I thought to myself like, wow, I haven't recorded an outfit review in, I was thinking three, four years. Well, I go and I pull it up on my old channel and I see I was 21 years old the last time I sat down to record a video about this, and with me now being 26, I just remember feeling the way I felt when I was making those videos and I hated it. The depression was crazy.

I was constantly having just the most extreme thoughts, and so what I realized, 26 now, not 21. I looked myself in the eyes and I was like, do you feel different now? And honestly, I didn't figure it out. I didn't beat depression. If you ask me at age 21, is your depression going to go away or what's your long-term plan? I would honestly have said, I don't have a long-term plan, and if this doesn't go away, then I will because I can't do this forever. But now I realize I have been doing this forever and I'm fine. It's like the weirdest thing is I thought I would be happy. I thought something was going to fix me. I thought I was going to change, and I've always known it was impossible. I've always known that it wouldn't happen. I think that's where a lot of my

fantasizing about disappearing was coming from. I knew I was never actually going to not be this way, because this is just what my brain is. I remember being 11 years old, just in my bed, looking at the ceiling and thinking to myself, you have seven years. I did the calculation in my head. You have this amount of years, this amount of days, and then you'll be an adult, because I, in a very innocent way, thought that would make me happy. Then what happens? I'm 18 years old, definitely not much better. And so it's like, okay, you're going to get your life together. You're going to get your bag. You're going to finish this degree. You're going to get a job, and that is going to make you happy. You're finally going to fill your life with enough stuff to where you don't have to think about the things that make you feel this way.

Well, I got the degree. God only knows how. Things are getting pretty bad for me in those final semesters. And no, that didn't really do it either. And so when YouTube started popping off or when my channel on YouTube started popping off a few years ago, I said to myself, it has to be this because what else is there? The answer can't be nothing. I refused to accept it. That didn't seem fair when so much of what I was dealing with wasn't my fault. And so part of the reason I think I fell apart so completely when my break started all those years ago, I fell apart because I realized that thing that I wanted at age 11. I was never going to find that. That's what I felt looking at myself in my last outfit review when I was 21 years old, I was sad that I had put my hope in something one more time, and then it still didn't make me happy.

I used to get so triggered by media intended to help people with depression. These things wind up helping a lot of people, millions of people, but for me, it always felt like a slap in the face because there was an insinuation that one day, you're not going to feel like this. Stay here. Don't do something you'll regret because one day you're not going to feel like this. But the truth of the matter is, the earliest thing I remember knowing is that I would feel like this. I remember being four years old and just thinking to myself, this is it. I feel so, so, so bad right now and I don't know how to feel better. I wanted to feel better for so long, I would say all the way up through maybe 24, I was so focused on I want to feel better. I want to feel better. All this media is telling me I could feel better. Everyone's saying it gets better. What can I do?

And then after 20 years of trying to get better, I started wondering actually, would it be okay if I never got better? What if I could just figure out how good I could be within my own very bad starting points? There are people who have seen so much more in me than what I don't see in myself, and I think part of me just getting older was realizing I don't have to understand. If someone tells me they love me and they see value in me and they're glad that I'm here, I don't have to understand where they're coming from. It's enough for them to perceive me that way. And so to continue existing and being that for other people at a minimum was enough. I don't want to just be some awful, awful story for my mom. I don't want to be the story about how she tried so hard and I tried so hard and then it just didn't work out. I don't think she deserves that.

I don't want to be that story for my friends. I don't want to be that story for you. I don't want to be the YouTuber who disappeared, struggled for mental health off and on, and then it got him in the end. And the good news is I don't have to be that because what I now know with a certainty after 26 years, I can say this, without a doubt I'm still going to be here. I can't say things are going to turn around, things are going to get better, I'm going to figure it out. The only thing I actually know is that there's a pretty high likelihood that tomorrow I will probably have to do most of this again. And so during that one and a half years while I was gone, the main thing I tried to figure out was what to do with that information. I think finally outliving my fantasies of disappearing and realizing nothing is ever really going to

happen to me, and I'm not going to do anything to myself. Where do we go from here now that we didn't get this magical, mystical fix your life button? And the truth of the matter is, I have no clue. I don't know why I'm here. I don't know why I'm alive or why I was put into this world. I am very strongly convinced that there might not be a reason at all, and for the first time in my entire life, I think I'm actually completely fine with that. I'm going to wake up again tomorrow, and I'm probably going to have a good time recording that VMA video or doing whatever it is I feel compelled to do. I'm probably going to keep uploading just like I did 28 days in a row. Can't say it'll be 28 more days in a row, but I think it would be awesome because I've really been enjoying myself. I'm going to go about my day, and it

is going to be filled with so many pieces of the life I've had to build to sustain myself. So many thought processes, so many weird habits and strange ways of interpreting events that are mandatory for my continued existence here on this planet. I'm going to have to rationalize away my feelings again, and it's going to be fine. That's the thing I didn't realize. I know to many people, that might not even sound like an answer. That might not sound like an improvement. Well, what did you learn? Just that you're going to have to keep doing this forever. But what I realized was I have a 100% success rate. You can say what you will about the things that I've messed up or the bad periods I've had, but as far as waking up and getting through the day, I have a 100% success rate no matter how difficult it was or what I had to do to get to

the end of it. I've gotten to the end of every single day thus far, and that's what I realized. I can do that again tomorrow. I can. Even if tomorrow's not me being happy, I was wrong in thinking that I can't do this indefinitely. No matter what happens tomorrow, I'm still going to be here just like I have been here every day, just like I've never been beaten, I guess by my depression. Even if I wake up tomorrow and it all falls apart, I am still going to get to the end of that day because I have a 100% success rate. If I wake up, do anything, go back to sleep. I won that day. Back when I did not have a YouTube career, I was working at a gas station with a college degree. I couldn't get a job anywhere. What I didn't realize was I was

still winning. When I was in school, and every single day I looked for a new way out, I was still winning every single day. And I'm so proud of myself. I'm genuinely so proud of myself, honestly. It sounds funny or sad or whatever to congratulate myself for living, but that's what I was missing this whole time. I am genuinely so proud of anyone who just woke up and tried. Sometimes that's the most difficult thing to do. It's the hardest thing I could imagine doing is having to do any of this again. But I will do it again, and honestly, I'll make parts of it look easy because I've been doing this a while. It's not my first rodeo. I think a really big difference between me now at age 26 and me at age 21, I can do all this and then go back to work. I can actually put all these feelings in a box, not because I want to hide them or seal them off. The

thing I couldn't accept before is that box is me. I am all of these feelings. I don't have to try to chain them up and lock them down and duct tape them. This deserves a spot on my channel just as much as any of the content I've uploaded on the past 28 days, because this is me. And because I have the experience now of so many days like this, it's not going to completely derail me. So I see a lot of comments on my recent videos saying, he must be thriving, he's doing great, et cetera. And they're true. I think looking at this zoomed out, it probably seems like I'm doing a lot better because in many ways I am. Looking at myself when I was 21 and realizing, wow, it seems like I've grown so much on the surface, but realizing that I didn't, I didn't

find what I was looking for. I just kept going. I'm not less depressed than I was. I just know how to handle it a lot better, and I'm really, really, really proud of myself for sticking to the point where I got better at managing this. I didn't get less sad. I just got older, y'all. I just got older. That helped. I think that helped more than I could possibly have conceived of when I was younger, and so yeah, I used to just rage and cry and want to scream. Whenever anyone would say, it gets better, it gets better. You are not crazy for not relating to any of that. I know I'm not the only person who understands fundamentally this isn't going to get better. This is who I am. I'm not a problem. I guess I don't need to be fixed. Similarly, depression

is not, it's not mine to beat. My only job is to not let it beat me, and I win. I win every single day that I wake up and I try my best. If trying my best looks like hours and hours of new content a week about all these cool things that people are having so much fun with, that's not more of a win than the year and a half when I was gone. It's not. I don't have more value because I am doing more, and when I have to pick things up, I have to figure things out. I'm not going to be worth less in the future if I do less. So I guess if I had to answer the question, does anyone else feel like they'll never be happy? I will never possess what I thought happiness was when I was younger. That's the biggest thing I've had to accept as an adult. I will never possess

what I imagined happiness to be, and truly, I'm fine with that. I don't need what isn't for me because I have done a lot with what is for me. Look what I did. You know what I mean? Look what I was able to do and then look beyond that and look at the fact that I'm still here at all. The truth of the matter is during my break, I didn't know if anyone was going to watch me when I came back. I've seen channels that disappeared for the exact amount of time that I left, and they came back and the channel was dead. The YouTube algorithm rewards constant posting, which is why my videos have been doing really well, which I'm happy about, but the flip side of that is it can really penalize you if you don't post. There are the lucky ones that it seems like some people disappear and come back and disappear and come back and every video is bigger than the

last ones, but what no one really talks about is the channels that disappear and come back and no one ever saw it. That notification never went out. The people who did remember weren't enough to push that video to the people who deserve to see it. I realized during my break that my YouTube career might be over, and so I had to fully accept the fact that that was the end of the chapter in which YouTube was supposed to make me happy, and funnily enough, that chapter is still closed. Even though I'm posting all of these videos, I'm not doing this because I think it's going to finally change that thing. That doesn't change. I'm doing this because I'm having fun and I know that I'm making people's day better. I was so fed up with my content before because I didn't know how to balance it. There was a lot of negativity, but now I know I'm doing a good job.

balancing my topics out. Do you know how I know? Because I'm fine. I like my videos now. I like this channel. I like what I'm able to do. Luck doesn't begin to cover the fact that I left. I came back and I'm now doing better than ever. You all have to realize there was a larger possibility that you never would've seen me in a video ever again, and so I'll never take that for granted. I'll never take the ways in which YouTube has enabled me to take a break for granted. But just know that this happiness is me now. I don't know what me in the future is going to be, but I'm going to be there. You know what I mean? It'll be cool if you were there. I would love that actually. And who knows? I am only 26. Maybe my perspective will completely change in the future,

but for the very first time, I'm fine if it doesn't. I'm fine with where I am right now. I've spent my entire life just winning every single day against odds that genuinely felt insurmountable, and the tips and tricks I've picked up along the way for how to balance things out, they made it easier. It did not get easier. I just got better at dealing with it. If it all falls apart again, I'm still going to be here at the end of it. Then I'll pick up the pieces and see what I learned that time. I used to think that some people just seemed like they lived their lives as a collection of happy moments joined by the occasional low point, and that made me feel so broken, genuinely like something was wrong with me because I knew that I was just living all bad with the occasional high point where I am slightly above rock bottom.

but any level of happiness I knew was temporary and just shrouded in that nasty thought that this is just until it all comes crashing down again. But now I see the neutrality actually. Bad things or good things will happen. I'll have good days or bad days, but objectively I'll get through them. I'm proud of myself for never figuring it out. I'm proud of myself that I didn't figure it out at 18. I'm proud of myself that I didn't figure it out at 21 and I'm proud of myself for recently realizing there was nothing to figure out. The fact that I never figured it out and just persisted in spite of all of that is pretty amazing when you really think about it, and I feel the same way about anybody who may be struggling. I could be 40, 45 and say to myself, it doesn't matter that I never figured it out. What did I do in spite of that? As long as the answer is as much

as I could. Hey, what do I even owe anybody? I don't owe the world happiness. I don't. I'm proud of myself, and how could I not be proud of anybody who is in the same scenario? Anyways, the VMAs. Am I right? Some crazy outfits. I'm going to record that video next, and I'm going to have fun doing it. I'm going to drink some water. I'm going to play Astro Bot on the PS5. Oh, I've been looking forward to that. I'm going to get a full night's sleep. I'm going to read your comments. I'm going to do all the things, and none of them are going to fix me because I was never broken.