Assuming the worst

He goes, “Why do you always assume the worst in me?”

It’s a defense mechanism.

I have another idea where I need to write about denial, but I will also write about it in this blogpost. I will have to touch on it.

Human psychology might actually be really simple.

If you wonder why people are the way they are…look at what has happened to them.

If you look at the situations that have happened to me in my life, especially the recent, unhappy ones, you will understand the habits and mechanisms that I have acquired as a result. Or will you? At least, it is your best bet to at least partially understanding (hopefully).

In a lot of the recent situations, I had to wait. So much waiting. So much of the “virtue” of “patience.” But it wasn’t virtuous because it was simply horrible. It was simply waiting in this doomed way, seeing as things fall apart. Forced to stay, forced to watch, forced to be trapped in the system. Seeing how bad things could get. Seeing how broken I could be left to feel.

So what did I have to develop?

I had to change. In the sense that I had to change my beliefs.

I used to believe that hard work and determination paid off…but my life taught me in the most brutal way that it does not, and has not.

Through all the waiting, it was a process to shifting to this new view. After everything that has happened, and I was right, I had to become more cynical basically. I had to lose hope. I had to start thinking in a hopeless way. In a realistic way. In a “what if things actually don’t work out?” “What if none of that hard work bs actually works?” “What if none of this matters?”

I had to confront this childish hope that things work out. Because it literally didn’t work. In a way that left me broken.

So can you really judge me that I have no more hope? That I’m no longer a very hopeful or optimistic person? Because this will leave scars, and it will have effects that don’t wear off for long. For instance, we’ll see how this even impacts my med school chances. Additionally, I don’t even know what’s going to happen with the apartment here in Madison for next year. Will I end up paying for an apartment I’m not even living in? How will I feel when I’m across the country and lonely and know nothing and nobody and don’t know the new system or anybody or how to do anything? How will I feel when I keep getting lost on the streets that I don’t know, because I was forced to walk different streets for two years to a place that I was “fake-accepted-to”? How will I feel in this place I’m not supposed to be in, don’t want to be, dreams crushed?

I will always remember it. When it’s the most important thing to me, I will be thinking about it everyday and all the time. I will see the streets, and be like, “these aren’t the right streets. This is not where I’m supposed to be.”

I had to develop the mechanism of denial. Because if you don’t have hope, and assume the worst, you can’t get disappointed right?

It’s hard being a person who has high expectations, standards, dreams, and wants the best thing to happen (but who doesn’t want the best thing to happen?)

But I was forced to start thinking this way, can’t you see?

So yeah…I guess it has extended to other parts of my life. I don’t want to be expecting the worst in people. But is it easier? Does it keep my heart from breaking? Indeed it kind-of does, to someone who’s already been so broken by this. Can you blame me for being this way?

I have to leave. I have to be alone. I have to leave everything and everyone behind. I’m going, like half-of-a-person. Once you see me at the airport, that’s not a person. That’s some broken shell, for some reason waiting and getting on that plane. That’s some person trying to convince themselves there’s still something worth living for, even though life has treated them horrible, crushed them and broken their dreams, leaving them with nothing, shown them so far, that things only don’t work and nothing matters (i.e. hard work doesn’t pay off). Somehow, with still, some kind of dreams, I guess? I don’t know. I can’t explain what’s keeping me going, but I already wrote about that in the latest blogpost. With what kind of hope am I going forward, though, I don’t know, because it doesn’t feel like I have any left in me. When I say these will leave scars behind and I will think about this everyday, I am not joking.

It’s the type of feeling where I’ve lost everything, and there’s nothing left to lose. And here’s the thing, that that’s not even totally true. I obviously still somehow manage to be thankful for my life. And I know that in truth, there is a lot more to lose.

But I almost have this feeling that I’ve lost the most important things, that if I lose anything else, it won’t even matter. And another reason why I feel like it won’t even matter is because I feel too broken to even care anymore. It all makes it easier to assume the worst in everything, and everyone, you see. All my cynical and assuming-the-worst jokes, is a complete and total self-mechanism of denial and a wall. It’s not what I want to believe, of course it’s not what I want to believe, but it makes it easier to cope. Especially if the cynicism is right and it’s true. If the worst is true. And I can’t be disappointed or more broken (but can’t I be? Because I had this self mechanism for this situation and it still feels like I felt completely just as broken lmao, but I’m going to ignore this for now, because it probably would have been worse if I did have true hope and a lot of it).

Truthfully, I know hope makes this worse. The first time I got rejected from the College of Engineering, when I only first just got the extension, it hurt so bad I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I literally laid in bed for days and cried. I had no appetite. I didn’t want to eat. I had no motivation. I was literally so depressed. So classic depression. My mom and friends were really concerned about me. Perplexed. My friend was like, “damn I’ve never seen you like this. You are like truly depressed.” …Yeah. Never thought I’d see myself like this either! Look at that college of engineering, taking away my dreams and ruining my life! So far, let us keep a tally. They have ruined my summer, my winter break, my Christmas, my New Year, my entire beginning of the new year (2026), my semesters. My entire university experience. Something I was SO excited for. So full of life for (now that was all taken away). So all about. I made my life all about it. Isn’t it my fault? I did this to myself. But allowing something so great that affected me. It’s horrible. They even reached so far as to try to ruin my entire life and take all my dreams, motivation, and will to live away. They tried to take my purpose.

The second time was actual rejection. So it felt bad too. The third time was a complete confirmation, especially learning there was no way around it. I would have to leave to pursue.

My argument here is that even though I was shifting to being hopeless, hope still made me feel so much worse. And now I just simply don’t have it at all! It’s gone. Any last drip is gone. Because you can say, anything you don’t know for sure, and you want it really bad, you can’t control not having at least some drop of hope. That drop of hope will devastate you and crush you if things go haywire. With the extension, it felt like the end of the world. Things were not looking so good. I knew how slim chances were. But then, it felt like a chance. It didn’t work. I had to change and come to terms with that last semester. And even the last chance, the appeal, did not work either. In between all of those, there was hope.

Just doomed either way. Hope or not. And you can’t even control having that drop of hope.

I never viewed myself as a person prone to depression or maybe even capable of feeling this way. Which is ironic, because my friends and family have always known me as a deep person. So maybe I knew this could happen. But something like this, something like this, that means so much, always had the capacity to affect me this bad if it went wrong. And it did!

Though the things that happened to me, I could have never predicted. For things to be this bad. For this amount of a speechless type of bad. Like a purpose-taken-away-stripped-left type of sad. Especially from a school I was viewing as genuinely-safety. Ain’t that just so funny now (it ain’t funny). Gonna cry.

So yeah, can you blame me? This is how life has treated me. I don’t like that I am this way, but I am.

People view as denial as only a bad thing. But in a different blogpost, I have actually defined a lot of ways I personally think it’s good. It doesn’t make you an emotional or a dramatic person because it takes all of that away (I guess you could make the argument that it still adds drama and lore to your life but that point is honestly irrelevant here right now). I hate those types of people anyway. They actually drive me insane.

But my life has never failed to be dramatic. It just loves to be dramatic.

It takes a lot of negative emotion away. Jealously.

Just being in denial, and assuming the worst, takes that all away. It doesn’t allow you to be disappointed when the worst thing does actually transpire. It just leaves you…an emotionless shell. You don’t pay attention to things maybe that you should. You will not see people when they go bad. When they treat you bad. It will make you selfless, and humble, and isn’t that a good thing?

Does it also add a lot of emotion? Oh yeah. I have become so much more sad obviously, but also angry. But is that all bad? Do sad and angry people change the world? Maybe even more so. Where is the motivation and determination coming from?

Sad and angry people also make art. Like this. They produce this.