learned hopelessness

 I remember this line I scrawled in my journal, when I was a kid. More anarchist than communist in those days, it went something like, fuck their games, fuck their rules, I'd sooner lose than play with fools. 

I was full of ideas as to how things should be, which is fine and all, but if only I could have been convinced to accept that this is the world we live in. We only have a short time to make the most of it. It seems crazy to openly admit to preferring to throw it away over some sort of ideological pride. Almost on par with holding my breath until they give us communism.

I don't know how much value to place in all that, when I realize that it was all just this post facto rationalization thing the brain does. It may have some truth to it, but the underlying rationale had more to do with learned hopelessness. I wasn't like other kids. I was never going to have a life like theirs. I'd often feel enraged about it. It wasn't fair. 

All the more confusing, because I never really knew what made me different. My intelligence, my sensitivity, a more highly tuned sense of ethics? Hmm, that sounds suspiciously cliché, honestly. Was it that other kids treated me like I was different my entire childhood, when I was years behind them all developmentally? I wasn't bullied, I just wasn't one of them. I had no peers. Maybe that has a way of imprinting on a person's sense of self.

Always refusing to adapt, proudly standing my ground, because I deeply believed it was not a challenge I could conceivably overcome. If people didn't value me, they could fuck off. That seems reasonable on some level, and yet.. maybe put some thought and effort into doing something valuable? That was literally inconceivable to me. I don't know what I'd have to do, but it would never work. Even the things I am best at, I expect no one to value. Incidentally, this is fundamentally terrible for motivation.

Other aspects of my childhood sure didn't help with that mindset. Maybe I'll always feel different due to development back then, but now I'm also different because people don't know what it's like to scrape by like Gollum their entire lives. Nobody wants in on this, not even me. I'm honestly not sure if I'm still that tiny little kid in junior high, telling everyone to fuck off preemptively - or if they still treat me like I'm different, and I'm just reacting to that.

Social efforts have been feeling rather hopeless though. Going to a picnic made me want to crawl into a hole for a month.