i think i have a good idea to summarize the world i lived in that shaped my default worldview for the worse

imagine a world where most everyone your age rejects you for being different, and everyone older than you is either extremely unreasonable and unthinkingly authoritarian (rules and laws are king even if they're terrible and hypocritical, even if we all know they're bad) or they're the few who at least hear you out, even if they're beholden to people who are also like that and their hands are tied

you sure get some very cynical, jaded and dark ideas about people by default, and you pre-emptively dismiss them

and you kind of become one of them yourself, which is the insidious thing!

@KitRedgrave This is why we always at least try to reach out to people, even if it may not likely work out.

Honestly, this world is just wrong, we live in a world where our trust is broken right from the crib, betrayal is considered a part of life, and we end up hardening our hearts so that it doesn't happen to us.

Yet I can't help but think we've lost much more of ourselves than we can imagine living like this.

@KitRedgrave A few days ago, because of someone who we thought was a close friend betraying our trust and abandoning us, Valerie ended up spiraling into thoughts of being betrayed and abandoned by close friends, and ended up fracturing. I didn't take it well, and had a meltdown, also in part because I wasn't ready to become the system host so suddenly.

Unfortunately, the result of this is that we're making a decision to be a lot more careful and selective about who Val can give her trust to, because repeated betrayals like that is just not sustainable.