Great Expectations

There was a famous study once regarding the depression, that has prompted a debate – are depressed people pessimists – or actually are they realists?  (Depressive Realism)
Is everyone else wearing rose-colored glasses to see the world and overestimating their own abilities and the good that will come their way?
Do rose-colored glasses actually act as the positive shades that enable you to “manifest” positivity in your own life?
Or, as I think, depressed people are more enlightened, they see and experience’s the world’s injustice in technicolor and see what those blinded by their own misguided thoughts cannot see?

One thing that continually astonishes me, is the need for people in my life, to try to temper my expectations. 
When I finally meet someone I like that I might want to date, they say, don’t walk into the situation with any expectations.
When I am looking for a new job to escape a toxic workplace, they tell me all workplaces are awful and dealing with shitty people is unavoidable everywhere. 
When I say I want to leave the high paced nature of the city I live in because it doesn’t match my personality and may be harming my health, they list every flaw in every city I am possibly entertaining living in.  Too cold, too racist, too congested, too boring…    

But if I say that everything forwards looks bad and doomed and I would rather kill myself, their tune immediately changes.  Somehow, I AM the negative one, and my illness poisoning my outlook on life.

Say what?!

I have spent most of my life thinking that I am disgusting worthless being that doesn’t deserve any good to happen to me.  And you feel the need to advise me I must temper my expectations. 
What expectations do you conceive that I have?
Are you trying to protect me from being hurt or disappointed by warning me of the dangers that lie ahead?
Do you think a warning of how of all the negative aspects better prepares me to go out into this world, and try to take risks and make changes?  
Can’t you see how counterproductive it is to tell a suicidal person to be please aware, negativity awaits behind every door and nothing will ever go right for you? That just confirms that death is the best option!
 Or are you suggesting that my suffering is just a product of me calibrating my expectations too high??!
I mean, many believe that according to Buddha expectation is the source of suffering. 

When have I exactly ever acted in a way to suggest that I think I am entitled to, expect, or even deserve anything good?!

I do desire things — to have a safe home, without fires or burglaries and heat when its negative temperatures outsides, to have a safe workplace, where I am not bullied or fired or disciplined for being a good employee and doing excellent work because people with fragile egos have unchecked power, to have supportive people in my life, who do not blame me for my illness or feel burdened and compound its worsts features, to have access to decent healthcare where I can find providers and insurance companies that aren’t trying to cheat me and it doesn’t cost me 20% of my earnings to get treatment, to live in a community where I do not have to fear the racialized hatred might lead me to become a victim of mob violence if I unintentionally offend someone —- wow, I am such a fucking brat, aren’t I? 

I am tired of people having conversations with me that are truly just their own inner dialogues and have nothing to do with me.   
I am tired of people convincing themselves they have no options in their own lives as a way to validate the situation they are trapped in and inability to take risks or make changes.
I am tired of people trying to make peace with their own discontent and dissatisfaction by convincing themselves that nothing better is out there and telling me the same thing.  
I am tired of them internalizing their own experiences with disappointment and developing a coping mechanism of viewing their own flaw as having had high expectations and pinning that advice on to me.

I can see very clearly the obstacles to getting my basic needs met.   I know I am privileged relative to others.  But when you tell me not to have any expectations or keep them low, I hear that I don’t deserve anything good to come to me.  That I should accept boys who offer me no kindness, abusive bosses who seek to destroy me, and cold harsh living environments.  And if it upsets me, it’s not because they are doing anything wrong, it’s because I expected too much.  The cruelty of the world is inevitable, the fact that I feel this overwhelming unbearable emotional pain in response to it, is because I have a bad perspective and am not strong enough to withstand it. 
All of these thoughts add more reasons in the Pro column for suicide. 

How and where do you draw the line between, entitlement, expectation, desire, hope, and deserve?
How do I know when someone is abusing me if I give but expect nothing from them in return?
How do I find the motivation to keep living if I cannot expect that anything will ever get better? 
Can you actually hope for the best, and expect nothing?!