How Do You Do It?

I don't know. I have no answers. I want them but I don't know where to look or how to find them. I work and get nothing from it other than a paycheck and I don't know how to make that better. I get beat up over and over for a paycheck that doesn't go increase that hasn't increased in a long while. I watch and have watched people around me move onward and upward, and I stick in the same place.

How do I change who I am?
How do I work the system to my advantage?
Where do I get the skills to move on?

I feel like I am in a box, one partly of my creation, one partly out of my control. I honestly don't know how to break the box. I feel like I annoy my family and friends when I talk about it. I know I sound like a broken record, but I have been stuck for a long time. I work over and over, I try to motivate myself in more ways I can tell people. I try to do a good job. Only to feel like I am stuck in mud or walking up a sand dune, with every step I sink down a little. I try to move forward and go nowhere. I want to be less anxious, less apprehensive. I want to feel successful but I don't and I am worried that I will never feel successful. I try to avoid talking about work now, I try to avoid talking or thinking about what I do. I get told that work doesn't define you, which is not really true, we define ourselves and others by what we do.

I get asked why I don't smile or talk more, why aren't you more friendly. Every time I hear, wow, when you smile you actually look nice, or I/they don't think you like them, or why don't you smile/talk more people may like you then. It is a little hurt, each smile challenge comes with a little pain. Pain that I have to prove somehow through a smile that I have worth, that people don't like me that much, that I don't quite ever fit in. As I have another day in which I am criticized for my very being, that the fact that I try to be a good person means nothing. The only thing that has meaning is the last thing that I failed at. I move forward to be pushed back and reminded of my failures. I am supposed to act normal. How do I do that? How do I take criticism that isn't directed at the quality of my work but at the quality of my being?
How do I break the cycle of who I am?
How do I fit it?

Sorry for the rambling I needed to get these feelings out. I am not looking for answers. I need no platitudes. No pep talks. They don't help. I just need to get out how I feel. I feel unsuccessful and hurt by life right now. (the funny thing I am content with Todd, and I take this out on him?)