mr brown, mr brown, please let me down...

life is really, honestly like a teeter-totter sometimes. or most of the time.
today, the imbalance i notice is a particularly strong one, and aggravatingly difficult to dispel.
it's the struggle to prove people wrong.
i am at my most functional, my most powerful even, when i'm going out of my way to deliberately prove others wrong about me. it's generally the reason that i'm doing my best so shortly after giant things in my life fall to absolute ruin. because then, with people's assumptions about my capabilities sufficiently shattered, i can rise above those expectations and prove that i'm not what they think i am.
it works less well, however, when people are assuming that i'm doing well, because then i have to throw a monkey wrench into it to retain the imbalance.
and when nobody is thinking anything in particular about me, it becomes a game against myself, and when i'm thinking i'm doing well, i have to go out of my way to prove to MYSELF that i'm not. and then, in completion of the cycle, i ruin my life, or a part of it at least, again. and in that ruin, i find my salvation, as i, then convinced of my own worthlessness, seek to prove to myself once more that i'm functional and whole.
there must be a way off the see-saw. there must.
because it's pointless to prove things when either one of them could be true one hundred per cent of the time were i only to stop having to be right over something that has to be wrong.
there is no need for the constant opposition, except that without it, i have nothing driving me.
and there's the real matter.
what drives people?
i don't know.
maybe i'm not one of them.