You don’t need them. Whoever you ache for, whoever you fight for, whoever you struggle for, whoever you sacrifice yourself for — they don’t care about you. Stop investing your time and energy in them. You’re just spinning your wheels for nothing. You don’t need these people, and the more time you spend on them, the more you’ll hate yourself when you sober up and realize all your effort was for nothing.

People are constitutionally incapable of appreciating the kindness and consideration of others. This is a fact. Whenever someone shows appreciation for something, you need to realize that this is an act. Peel open their skulls and look into the workings of their brain, and you’ll notice that they’re just putting on a show. Deep down, in the bottom of their cold, crippled hearts, people don’t care one iota about the things you do for them.

You are meat. You are a means to an end. A tool for them to use as they see fit. Don’t expect an ounce of genuine warmth, or you will end up freezing your little tush off in the cold barren desert that is society. This desert covers the four corners of your social word. Here and there, you may stumble on to an Oasis of authenticity, where
genuine relationships happen, but that is a rare occurrence, and chances are, most of your relationships belong in the desert, not in the oasis.

A sea of misery surrounds this dry and arid desert. Society is disingenuous, inauthentic, and full of sociopaths because mother nature is a cruel and heartless bitch. We are sentient beings who have managed to eke out a living in an inhospitable, violent, ad volatile cosmos. We are self-aware creatures stuck in a Universe that seems to have been designed to destroy life, not nurture it. The fact that we even exist is something that baffles most scientists. The world is constantly trying to kill us — through viruses, diseases, sicknesses, natural disasters, famine, and several thousand other threats. We are a fragile species stuck on a blisteringly dangerous planet. Worst of all, our planet looks like a sweet and innocent puppy when you compare it to the rest of the Universe.

Nature wants us dead, so it stands to reason that we’d be a little neurotic. Most other animals don’t have the pleasure of contemplating just how inhospitable the world is. They screw, they eat, they kill, they die. They don’t think about things, they just do them. We think. We ponder. We rationalize. We recognize how brutal the world is, and we do anything and everything to get by. This is the reason for the lack of authenticity in the world. Honesty isn’t a good policy when everything’s trying to kill you.

The Universe has given us plenty of reasons to be pricks, and very few reasons to be sweethearts. The very fact that sweethearts exist is almost a sick joke. When you’re sweet in a sea of bitterness, it’s deadly difficult to adapt. Decent people get burnt because there are so few of them. When you’re outnumbered by savages, you’re going to have trouble.

I am assuming that you are a good person. I am probably wrong, but I will give you the benefit of the doubt. You are a good person trapped in a terrible world. Don’t give in to its temptations. Don’t let it seduce you. Don’t believe what it tells you. Keep a stiff upper lip and hold people at a distance. Cultivate some self-reliance. Don’t get in the habit of depending on other people. Don’t let yourself need them. And never try to win them over by making them appreciate you. Just do your own thing. Live on your terms, by your rules, for your own reasons, in accordance with your own values.

Stand tall. Cast a shadow on the desert that surrounds you.