the petty feeling of victory that comes with denial

I knew one woman, an online efriend (never met in person) from an old AOL writing forum who, over the years, began to develop a perverse pleasure in uttering denials. By the time she died (her boyfriend wrote me a long, long spiel about her life, her long decline, and her death), she was constantly swatting away both attempts at guessing about her condition and sympathetic advice to help get her into a better place. Turns out she was over three hundred pounds when she died (hence why she never showed pictures of herself)—a stinking, bedridden sack of meat who consumed movies and TV, who shat the bed, whose boyfriend had basically become her arms and legs, i.e., her way of obtaining things since she couldn't do anything for herself. Like a lot of fat people who become less mobile and more dependent over time, she had learned the not-so-fine art of controlling others around her through her voice, and as I said above, she took petty satisfaction in uttering some form of No! or Wrong! to anyone who presumed to guess about her condition or tried to make suggestions to help her out. When you reach a point where your existence involves being confined to a bed, the only power really left to you is the petty power of denial, the only way to feel any power at all. It was a sad and lonely way to live, and eventually a sad and lonely way to die. I think a lot of older folks are in that position, grasping for ways to feel empowered and realizing the only real power left to them is the feeble power of the veto.