You're living a normal early teenage life. Doing what you so desire, top of the rung, happy.
Shit happens.
It breaks you - as a person, as a success in your own eyes in many other countless ways.
You reduce yourself to near nothingness. Much like a carcass disintegrating decidedly but ever so slowly, you gather the strength to get on to your feet. Life as you see it now has changed. Nothing could ever be the same again.
You become cold as you move on in life. Things just refuse to matter anymore. You can go the distance alone, or so you feel. You are happy alone. You think/love nought but yourself.
Cuts and bruises genuinely hurt a little less. There is focus in life, but most of it centered around your own self.
People refuse to understand you anymore. Friends drift apart, people get madly pissed at you. People you once cared for, are hurting badly and need you more than ever. Yet, you are indifferent inside, don't quite care and are content for the most of it.
Yet you are passionate, very much alive - for things you believe in, for things you want, for things that revolve mostly around you. You are living for yourself.
This is what I have found life to be. This is how I would define life progress, perhaps even success in a weird, contorted and twisted manner.