Comment by LoganDark

You don't need to be happy or healthy to survive.

> How do you even decide the difference between happy and emotionally fulfilling?

Happy is how you're feeling in the moment. Emotionally fulfilling is how you feel about the whole of your situation. Does it feel right? Fair? Or are you constantly "glad it's not worse"? Remove fault and justification from the equation -- wouldn't it be more emotionally fulfilling if parents didn't yell at you? If they didn't make such a big deal out of spending money on you? You can be happy a lot of the time despite those, but they tend to leave a hole in you anyway. Emotional fulfillment is the relative lack of those holes, compared to the good.