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I think life has some tragic features to it that just are what they are and won't change, regardless of how much it seems to us that it is unfair that they don't/won't/can't. An intelligent mind is driven to try to come up with a "philosophy" that makes it all seem meaningful. I think, OpenEyes, that you are a relentless thinker, which I happen to believe is noble. You don't settle for easy answers.
In trying to think through the circumstances of our own lives, we are also trying to think through the mysteries of life that have challenged human minds for thousands of years. What I find useful for myself is to remind myself that I can do something more satisfying than try and re-invent the wheel. Let me see what great thinkers of the past have already come up with. (Of course, they will contradict one another.) Then let my thinking be stimulated by that. It's a long time since I've been to the library and took out a good book, I mean a really profound work. I think I should (or even just google up some really top notch writing and read it.) I recommend this to anyone who is smart and given to doing a lot of thinking. We end up cannibalizing our own brains for lack of some "food for thought."
You seem more open to redirection than a lot of people are, so I am going to suggest something that I wouldn't suggest to a lesser person. Up-grade the level of your reading material. You have the intelligence for it. Explore the thinking of famous philosophers, especially ones who wrestled with emotional difficulties themselves. I was just trying to find a good quote from Nietzsche to put here, but I can't find what I want. He was interested in the desire that humans have to be understood. I think he said that it was a kind of a vain/futile desire, destined to always be frustrated, not that we'll ever stop desiring it. He addressed issues about how we get frustrated in life.
Other great thinkers thought a lot of Nietzsche's ideas were nuts, and they were right. The works published by Great Minds will be around and in print as long as humans survive. The vast majority of the ideas conceived by the vast majority of gurus and psychiatrists and therapists will end up, eventually, in the dust bin of stuff where things go that nobody is interested in anymore.
If you take a course in psychology, the teacher will probably tell you and your classmates that Freud didn't really understand a lot. The teacher will be correct. I will assert that the teacher is correct, but that the teacher understands even less. The teacher is a little mind.
Little minds do truly contribute to the advancement of understanding. The ball games don't get won just by the star athletes. But to only get material for thought from little minds is to go through life with one of your mental arms tied behind your back. That's okay -- unless you happen to be *intelligent.* If you are, then you will be asking for big answers to big questions from little minds. It gets so boring, tedious, and frustrating. It's like trying to dig for treasure using nothing but a teaspoon.
I'm not into making New Year's resolutions, but I it so happens I just made one. I am going to feed my mind better quality stuff. I'll still enjoy snacking on the fast food. I must, however, stop neglecting my real education, which requires exposure to and contemplation of the work of really top notch minds. Otherwise, I will be like those who first came out of the caves and had to invent everything from scratch. Let me take advantage of all that has already been thought by really capable minds. Then I won't be trying to reinvent the wheel. I may need to invent some modest gizmo that works for me in my life in modern world, but I won't be able to unless I study what's been done before.
Maybe nothing here seems relevant to your struggle. I guess when I post, I am fundamentally trying to help myself. I think we all are at some level - trying to help ourselves - whenever we do anything - even what we think we started doing to help someone else.
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