I've been contemplating my heel-face turn from a pessimistic edgelord to a proudly, albeit cautiously, optimistic person.

And it's not self-deceit. It's not like I've stopped seeing the terrible darkness at the bottom of everything. I just realized, over the years, that dwelling on it gets you nowhere, and it, sure as hell, does as much to help the situation as shouting at an ATM gets you richer.

Pessimism, much like loneliness, is intoxicating and highly addictive. It's poison, it's fucking heroin. It drains your willpower, it lulls you in that insidiously blissful sense of "there's no point an anything, and I'm superior to the plebs around me for seeing it", and "You don't have to do anything, what's the point, you're so clever". It kills you from the inside.