Optimists

I think that the type of life you live is chosen by you for the most part. I am talking about normal ideal conditions in the US. When I say ideal normal conditions I mean growing up poor and having almost nothing. No family vacations and going to a public school that makes you want to pull a columbine on it because you hate everyone so much. You don't get new clothes unless you really beg and plead. You don't even want to celebrate your birthday because you know the expense of a present might be too much. If you decide to go to college, your parents tell you good luck with that and paying for it.

When you grow up in these normal conditions like I have, then you tend to not trust or like anyone and you become skeptical of everything with the expectation of failure or broken promises. Growing up, none of my friends had fathers. They were either dead beats, dead or just not around. This was normal I thought. I hated my father because he was a very sad man who tried to mold me into something I wasn't. Eventually I didn't have a father because his stupid ass died due to self inflicted poor health.

I find it repulsive and offensive when an optimist wants to take all of my life experiences and all the reasons I am they way I am and I think the way I think and they just ball it all up into one word. They call me negative. So the next time you want to tell someone they are being negative, stop and think first about why they are thinking the way they are thinking instead of simply labeling them and trivializing their reasoning.

One of the things that truly makes me exceptionally upset is when someone doesn't listen to reason or refuses to see a problem and would rather tell me I am negative instead of deal with what is at hand. Those people are the reason we can't fix certain problems, they are the people who got theirs and want to ignore everyone else's pain.

I would rather be a realist any day, rather than an air headed optimist.