Denial!

Is denial so powerful?
Love deprivation from childhood, rejections and no admiration/ acknowledgement / respect for someone’s being - I think all that teaches a person not to love oneself.

Since I was always an insignificant, immaterial, irrelevant, invisible being, for acceptance by others, I did not know a better way than to work hard. I wanted to be respected, my being acknowledged.

Years of toiling did not earn me what I yearned for. I started not working so hard? Or taking anything I achieved through hard work for granted? Those hard earned achievements also have slowly faded away over the years. I don’t know what I have been living for. I am looking for answers, some sort of explanation. I don’t know where to look. I feel trapped here. I am suffocating. I want this pain to end.