Some thoughts on how the "unlived life" metastasizes and poisons you.
Bitterness is such an ugly emotion. It forces people to reject what they secretly want, because confronting the visible gap of what they wish for and where they actually are is too cognitively painful. The "unconventionally attractive" person sees a beautiful person and hates them without even knowing them, assumes they must be stupid, makes odd passive aggressive comments, is full of schadenfreude if something bad happens to them.
The TikTok of office women dancing ("blazer and a bob") provoked so much vitriol because people both want to consider themselves above those made-up email jobs (making powerpoints about "alignment strategy" for 100K a year) and they are secretly jealous that these women have efficiently min-maxxed their effort to live well in a major city without much skill or work stress.
When I was younger, I did ballet, and I started to get hair under my arms when I was around ten years old - before many of the other girls. I came home embarrassed, as soon as I first noticed, and my mom said, "No, you're way too young to shave. It grows back thicker. When you're thirteen." Other girls in my class began to notice too, and they'd whisper to me, "you have pit hair." I knew, my face would go red, tears would spring up in my eyes, and I would avoid raising my arms for some of the exercises until the teacher yelled at me. My posture became slumped and ashamed. I kept begging my mom, she always said no, and the one time I tried to shave without any practice, I cut myself and became scared of the razor. The blood on my arm and faint sting felt like an omen that I didn't belong. I quit ballet by the time I was eleven. If my mother had taken ten minutes to show me how to shave, I would have stayed into the higher levels. Sometimes I watch ballet now at 21 with a weird bitterness.
The middle-aged couple in the grocery store sees a teenage girl, the ugly husband leers at her, and the depressed wife glares at the girl instead of her husband, because that's easier to confront than the fact that she has been wasting her life on a loser.
If you have a gut instinct, or a dream, or some kind of lingering insecurity that could be changed/fixed, go after it. Life is truly too short. One leap of faith, or challenging year of growth, or proper surgical procedure can help you avoid the negative compounding effect of years of mental complexes, missed opportunities, and that deep, jealous bitterness from existing with so much "unlived life" in you!
And even when people do fix their insecurities, if they've been bitter too long, there are lasting psychic scars on the personality. Think of the women who get on GLPs, lose all the weight, but still act the same. The sooner you can intervene, the better.
Look at what you're jealous of, what you hate (earnestness, "tryhards," "bimbos," etc) and you might be looking at what you keep denying yourself and are bitter over. There's no glory in deciding you have to take the difficult road when your gut instinct is leaning towards something else. It will just rot you until you're a shell of yourself. Whatever discomfort there is in (1) admitting what you actually want and (2) reaching for it is worth the freedom at the other side.
Please protect yourself against bitterness!
I think letting yourself fall deeply in love with another person, or with the world, like getting "drunk off [your] own tenderness" is the antidote to bitterness
It truly is. I remember when I first fell in love with my boyfriend when we were teenagers any depression or anxieties I had about my own shortcomings disappeared. I didn’t need to feel unworthy in other people’s eyes or bitter towards them because someone I truly love and respect sees me as whole. Nothing can touch me and nobody else’s successes matter.
This is cute
Bad happenings are a part of life. Take them for the experience and affirmation of living they give you. But don’t let them harden you. Always try to remember the gift it is to be alive
Wow I love this. Beautifully written and very timely for me as I’m in a violently ugly phase and feeling bitter and hateful daily. Thank you!
I think bitterness has calcified my heart. I never wanted to get this way, just everything I tried to prevent it never worked (which twofold worsened me). I’m not even old, yet I feel like I’ve given up on everything. Frankly, possibly wrongly, I blame the lack of romance in my life. Too much deprivation. I had a lotta love to give and now I don’t anymore. Now I’m just a tinge of sadness and bitterness and frustration. I feel all I can do is hope for some revelation to open me again.
Kind of pseudointellectual rant coming in, but hear me out.
Your focus on romance is interesting because that requires matching up with someone. If you don't even like yourself, how can you like your match? If you can't regulate your own vulnerability without alcohol/drugs, how can you safely hold another person's vulnerability? If you have so much love to give, give it to yourself first before you start looking for someone to pull into a dopamine-feeding distraction loop. Also the people who would sign up to date a self-identified "tinge of sadness and bitterness and frustration" probably won't be the most well-adjusted or healthy options out there. If you want someone kind, someone beautiful, someone accomplished, etc, you need to also meet your own demands to match who you're dating. You can't blame the "lack of romance" as some immovable universal curse, it just reflects a disconnect between who you are now and who you want to be your match. All that starts internally - your post history shows repeated patterns of enabling your worst impulses, wallowing, identifying heavily with the "outcast" archetype, etc. Even if you were physically gorgeous, there are internal issues that need compassion and care.
Basically if nothing changes, nothing changes, but you also have the complete power to change anything about yourself. You can do that earnest, somewhat embarrassing work of identifying the root of your bitterness, figure out how to close the gap between what you want and where you are, and then start some kind of momentum. Progress >>> stagnancy, and sometimes even feeling like you're on a new trajectory will help you, even before the changes are noticeable to anyone else. Just stay in motion, give it enough time, and things change. It won't happen overnight, but it can happen if you're there for yourself with all the love and patience that you would hypothetically pour into someone else. (And then, ironically, you'd be a far better boyfriend in any potential relationship and naturally align with better-adjusted people.)
Hang in there, it sucks when you're in a dark place but there are ways back to yourself.
i used to like myself actually, i thought i was alright. but i think i got in my head, being single & lookin for so long, that actually im not alright. so im workin on not hating myself. i’m not looking for a relationship anymore, and yeah obviously i wouldn’t wanna date me either in my current state. i am sober now, & one of these days im gonna get off these awful dopamine-apps and maybe if im smart ill shoot my cellphone with a gun.
my post history is a poor reflection of me pls don’t judge me too harshly based off that, i’m not that awful.
i don’t think wallowing is a bad thing for me, i think id be worse off disconnected from it, its maybe the truest part of me. my most natural impulse. i like it actually.
and yeah im trying to improve myself. i wanna get a bit smart if it can be helped, try to be present and creative like i used to be and enjoyable to be around.
my big trouble i think is my lack of dreams, aspirations, etc. i dont really want anything, i mean i’ve nothing i want to work toward. do i just drum up ideas until they excite me? i guess probably. i want to be healthy and get back my curiousness (i know i need to reframe that, i know my mind is never going to be what it once was).
i appreciate the reply
Not judging you, I actually was pretty clinically depressed around 2024 and I think I've been on an upwards spiral since. So I can relate to a lot of this (and congrats on the sobriety!)
The brain is so neuroplastic, if you were very motivated / into reading before, you can absolutely get back there again. I think a lot of people don't necessarily have clear Passions and Fascinations, but they do have an idea in mind of the life they want, and take steps to get there. That creates a fundamental sense of purpose or direction. Also if you're a social person, your friends and connections create a strong anchor of meaning.
Personally, I'm a good enough science student and like medicine, so I'm opting into a decades-long aspiration ladder where there's always a clear next step ahead. Getting good grades/research/volunteering, getting into med school, matching into residency, fellowship, etc. And I enjoy the process, I like the people I've been meeting along the way, and seeing insane shit in the ER gives me so much appreciation for life. I've found a crazy autistic research PI, I've gotten closer with my doctor cousin, and it's kind of a (trauma) bonding experience when you're cramming for exams with classmates in someone's living room at 1am.
Environment is also a pretty big factor in how you feel. If you actually map out what your days look like, some of us get into routines that would depress an objectively "normal" person. If you're in a dark room all day, if you don't have casual acquaintances (ie barista immediately notices when you changed your hair because you're a regular somewhere), etc. Definitely some trial and error to find what specifically lights up your brain.
And of course, 2026 is your year!
Word. I’m glad to hear you’re doing well. Gives me hope.
I agree with you, I do need to do more, get out more, in a broad sense. My day to day routine is terrible. Used to be worse tho, so I’m technically on the up. I need to try new things more often too. I live in a shit down but who doesn’t? and I have a car, I can do something about it.
I’m excited to get out of 2025, which has me a pinch excited for 2026. Here’s hoping 2026 is good to us all.
Thanks for all the advice.
Yeah, good luck :) progress isn't perfectly linear, but month to month it adds up
Bitterness is the guard dog at gate of the front yard that contains your blessings. Put that motherfucker down!
So true! Let your haters become gators at the bayou of success
I would really like to live in NYC again but I couldn't make enough money there to both live and save up for a house and family. I have so many things I want to do and places I want to see, but I feel as if the reality of wanting to build a home and have children involves foregoing these experiences, because this shit is expensive now.
Also, most early/mid 20s I met in the city were funded in one or another large way by their families, so I feel kinda vindicated in thinking this.
Definitely true but I think it’s possible to balance realism with not suffering unnecessarily. Maybe not a golden NYC penthouse and Europe every break, but you can absolutely live somewhere that brings you real happiness. If you have a good education/trained in skills with demand, there will be job openings with opportunity for upward growth near all the major cities. There’s a trap of black-and-white thinking (“I can’t afford to live in my dream NYC home, so I guess I have to live somewhere that I hate now. Dream over”) instead of just looking for the next best option out there. There are places where you can afford to raise a family and enjoy living there. Also who knows, maybe there will be a brief shining window before Mamdani fucks up the NYC housing market where a home becomes affordable
The scariest part of your post for me was your ballet story. Makes me kinda not want to be a parent: you never know what seemingly innocuous action ends up screwing with your child's long-term mental health.
But yeah. Bitterness sucks. Beautiful post.
Haha don't worry, I wasn't too badly traumatized, just in an awkward life phase. My mom totally changed her policy for my younger sisters later on, joy of being the oldest daughter. And thank you :)
I appreciate this thank you
Ofc, been having a reflective winter afternoon
probably my low self esteem talking but i think almost all negative emotions are really anger at the self for not being good / powerful / controlled enough to make things different. bc if you could change things so that you wouldn't feel the negative emotion you would.
Bitterness absolutely degrades the spirit!!
Nothing worse than “miserable hag” energy - it ages you in lightspeed and fattens you up like swine for harvest. my roommate is like this and I can’t look her in the eye when she starts bashing on women in the event that I catch whatever mental illness she is suffering from. god forbid you disagree with these types or try to add some warmth to the conversation
thank you brother/sister i genuinely needed to read this i’ve spent my whole day being bitter 😭😭❤️
I am too mentally weak. I have been drowning in bitterness for as long as I can remember and can't see that changing.
Unfortunately I got way too much to be bitter about being a foster youth child. I honestly do not know even what a proper foundation for a family even looks like. A lot of my early years in my twenties was just me genuinely realizing how much I was neglected and abused back then.
I'm doing better and I don't ever see myself permanently staying bitter about everything. But when the neglect starts to leak into serious stuff like medical neglect which it was in my case.
It's hard not to feel anything but other than disgust and bitterness about the whole situation that should have never even happened in the first place.
I'm sure it will pass though...
I hope lol
A beautiful post. At my fossilized age of 53 I have had to confront a number of things I know now I will never do or achieve, and let them go with love. The number of middle-aged people who let themselves be consumed by bitterness (exhibit A: MAGA) at the closing off of youth and possibilities is really tragic.
All anxiety and resentment is just the ego's fear of death manifesting through emotion. When you get deep enough into those thought patterns you just start to unconsciously hate anything that threatens to shatter your precarious sense of externally-derived identity.
such a beautiful post! thanks so much for this it will bounce around in my head forever
I lost a hundred pounds and still want to die. I put everything into trying to get what I want only to find out it was never in reach. Not because of anything I did, but because of what I am. Everything in my life was predestined, I never had a meaningful choice. Before there was at least the illusion that change was possible, now I don't even have that.
Appreciate you and your mind
Great PSA
When another woman intimidates you it's a sign you should befriend her.
Surprisingly wise and well written for a 21 year old
this is wonderful! you’ve articulated something i couldn’t put my finger on for a while. i’ve been referring to it as embracing jealousy. really acknowledging whether i’m jealous of someone or something so i can resolve it and let it go. i’m saving this to reread in 2026 a million times tysm
Big love from my thawing heart to yours, OP. 💙
I’ve steeped too long in resentment for this to reach me
What if I’m the loser ugly husband? Should I go for the pretty girl at the supermarket?