But this, at least, has been my own.

[vostoklake]

 When I was 12, my mother shoved a book under my nose with the title Be Happy! She angrily insisted to me that my negative moods and depression were sheer laziness, an attempt to blackmail attention and favours from people with a “poor me syndrome”. She expected me to make a free choice to be happy so I would stop annoying her, and stop being embarrassing to other people.

 

So after 25 or so years of feeling guilty about being negative, pessimistic and depressed, I have to say – to hell with that. Yes, I make a choice to be negative, to live within limits of low expectations. This is how I stay safe. This is how I stay protected from that realization that the world sees right through you and it only lets you have what it doesn’t feel like taking away right now.

 

The things I remember most from my childhood are having all my agency stripped away, of having it made clear that nothing, not my self-esteem, not my physical integrity, certainly not any possessions, could be defended if someone bigger and stronger got annoyed with me. But that hurts much, much less if you learn to live with having nothing, being nothing, deserving nothing.

 

I’m giving up any ambitions for myself, except that that I hope I can be useful to someone, somewhere. But this one thing is still my own – my right not to be happy, my right to say no, to refuse to accept that everything is for the best, to refuse to try, to refuse to run the risk of failure, to refuse to let the skin-ripped-off, self-disgusted feelings of the abused child surface again.

 

Yes, you’re absolutely right, my world is horrible because of my negative attitude, my selfishness in refusing to adopt the sunny attitude which would make me much more pleasant for others to be around. But at least it’s my world, not yours. I could not survive in your world without ceasing to be me. I refuse to even try any more.