Bitter and twisted

What getting bitter and twisted does for you.

   Being bitter and twisted isn't just a mood you're in for a day because somebody did something nasty to you. Being bitter and twisted isn't something you would want to be if you knew what it really is. Being bitter and twisted doesn't mean to be bitchy and rude. Being bitter and twisted is being lonely.
   A series of damaging events can shape your personality in a different way from the fashion in which everyone else's personalities are made. Generally, a person is like a pillar of clay. Every event in their life sculpts the clay lovingly, like a mother's hand. A bitter and twisted personality developes differently; it is more like a tube of aluminium, bashed and hacked by a variety of sharp blows. If the damage is sever, it can pierce the aluminium, letting light in but at a price, the burning of the interior.
   Parents are often the first to strike. They mean to merely shape the individual for the best, a coherant shape infitting with the rest of the world, but what looks like a moulding can feel like a thrashing. The young person can see the blade of an axe rushing at their face, feeling the bruise before it forms. Parents often mean well, only in extremely rare cases do they intentionally cause arbitrary harm. Deficiency of freedom can be the greatest harm a parent can do to their child; this ranges from giving one's child a huge lack of financial freedom to grounding.
   Insufficient pocket money leads directly to the child using his or her initiative to raise some cash. Parents often underestimate their children's capabilities, and very few parents conceive that their children are capable of crime. Often, parents will justify small amounts of pocket money by claiming that they are teaching their children the value of money - this can have an adverse effect, teaching children a different lesson; that crime does pay.
   Grounding or disallowing children to go to parties and other social events can have very negative effects. Often, teenagers who do not make an appearance at a party will become an outcast of their young society. This scars in later life, and in the right circumstances, will eventually lead to becoming bitter and twisted.
   Patronisation: Teenagers may be constantly in the news regarding vandalism and drug-abuse leading to death, but this does not justify the series of lectures and warnings given by concerned parents and/or grandparents. Most teenagers are not involved in such activities, and if they are, they certainly feel that they know what they are doing. A five-minute lecture will not help matters, teenagers have no respect for elders anymore because they have evolved into omniscient human hybrids. They have lost their faith in the adult having noticed the pointless and senseless way in which they treat the plant and the pathetic way in which they work to live and live to work. Lectures, talks, or "quick-words" will not serve to distance the juvenile from trouble, they will serve only to distance the juvenile from the parent.
   Children who have unpleasant childhoods are 83% more likely to become fully-blown bitter and twisted than children who have comfortable childhoods.

   Most bitter and twisted people became so before they had reached the age of 21, not only does this put an obvious onus on the role of childhood, but it points the accusing finger at education.
   Stress is a major cause, and before the age of 21 stress comes almost exclusively from the education system.
   As an adult, negative forces come primarily from the fields of love/lack of, career, and general disillusionment of life. As an adult, little can be done for the intellect to prevent the development of a bitter and twisted personality.

Index 2.