I can't speak for anyone else but for me it's been years of it. It was even worse when I first showed up. People tie your worth as a person to whether you're making the 'right' moral choice, and the 'right' moral choice is to destroy yourself being nobly miserable. The expectation is to keep bashing your head against the wall knowing full-well it won't break because if you stop doing it then it's a failing of character on your part, never mind how tired and bloody it gets you. Do anything else and you're selfish, uncaring, sadistic, evil. If you have the audacity to be happy then clearly you don't care if anyone else is suffering.
It's why I keep to myself mostly now. I'm tired of going in the same circles every time a new batch of folks come in to preach at me about how I've 'given up' or aligned myself with the 'evil' option, as though it's that simple. When that's how you talk, that's what people will hear. When you say 'I want to get rid of the Fog', what some of us hear is 'You're wrong for being grateful for a second chance. You're wrong for being happy here with the life she gave you, and you're wrong for wanting to protect it.' It's not like Elias where there's a chance, however slim, that he might be returned to humanity. The Fog was never human. Take away her power and she'll just be gone, because magic is all she is, and you have no way of knowing what that will do to us or whether it will permanently destroy any chance of a way out. No one ever thinks about that. Her power brought us in. Get rid of it and you may very well destroy the only door back out.
<teslacoils>
It's why I keep to myself mostly now. I'm tired of going in the same circles every time a new batch of folks come in to preach at me about how I've 'given up' or aligned myself with the 'evil' option, as though it's that simple. When that's how you talk, that's what people will hear. When you say 'I want to get rid of the Fog', what some of us hear is 'You're wrong for being grateful for a second chance. You're wrong for being happy here with the life she gave you, and you're wrong for wanting to protect it.' It's not like Elias where there's a chance, however slim, that he might be returned to humanity. The Fog was never human. Take away her power and she'll just be gone, because magic is all she is, and you have no way of knowing what that will do to us or whether it will permanently destroy any chance of a way out. No one ever thinks about that. Her power brought us in. Get rid of it and you may very well destroy the only door back out.