>>33842390 (OP)
I grew up abused, badly. Beatings and emotional abuse from my older sister, neglected by mom who enabled my abuse as long as it meant she didn't have to do anything about it, dad was absent selling heroin and doing meth. I had few if any friends, was dirt poor, and any time something good came my way my sister would break it or it would get stolen.
All I had was spite. At that point anyone would become jaded and horrible, right? I became very manipulative and Machiavellian, I knew what it was like to be in the underdog situation, knew what desperate souls were longing to hear, dying to feel. I took advantage of peoples weakness with a silver tongue inherited from a bloodline of pimps and drug dealers to indebt others to me. I built, crafted and carefully curated an image of myself as someone who really cared about people under to get what I wanted, and what I wanted I got. Companionship, sex, more weed than I could smoke, food than I could eat, booze than I could drink. I fixed up a car and basically lived out of it like a nomad.
Somewhere along the way I realized I wasn't acting or manipulating, I really did to reinvent myself. I made deep and genuine connections, I became generous with my time and assets, developed a knack as a handyman and a deep satisfaction for being the guy people came to for help. What I thought was manipulation became genuine empathy and I managed to help a lot of people through some serious low points. I thought I was acting out of spite but I really was changing for the better. I didn't steal my happiness from others, I built it with them.
I became the kind of person I wished I had when I was young, the change I wanted to see in the world. It could be argued that is a perfect revenge on the people who tried to break me down, but I choose to see it as finding a way out.
Things stay shit if you *let* them stay shit. The world sucks but you can brighten up your little part of it if you try.
