Lion makes me sad... :-(

Question

Guess this just a rant and/or call for emotional support, but...
I'm really sad Apple made this horrible Lion thing.  I upgraded my circa-2008 MacBook Pro -- which had been running perfectly fine under Snow Leopard -- and now it's so slow I can barely use it. 
Worse than that, it's simply a terrible design.  I've taken it for granted that Mac products "just work;" you never need to think about anything.  Totally intuitive. Nothing gets in the way.
Now, I run into things I have to work around constantly.  The "restore everything when you log in" thing.  The "versioning" in TextEdit (I just want to save out a copy of a file!  Why can't I do that??) Even gestures: I liked being able to clear everything off the desktop with a single swipe.  Now, it's a different gesture, which I can't physically do.  Why am I forced to re-learn this??
*What* were they thinking??
Make it go away! :-(
-anna

Answer 1

Firstly, no this is not an emotional support site. Best to talk with your therapist.
Secondly, you were in not way betrayed. No one twisted your arm to install Lion. You could have tested it out without affecting your old system in any way. Apple's website provided everything needed to determine if you even needed Lion.
Thirdly, as I mentioned just go back to Snow Leopard if you aren't happy with Lion. No doubt had you been using Leopard you would be complaining about Snow Leopard.
Things change, learn to adapt. Only those who adapt will survive. That's my experience with Lion and everything else. So, I live quite comfortably with Lion. I find autoresume and versions useful tools.
Dealing With The Resume Feature of Lion
Managing Mac OS X Lion's application resume feature.
If you shutdown your computer you should get a dialog asking if you want applications to resume on the next startup. Simply uncheck the box to prevent that from occurring. Open General preferences and uncheck the option to Restore windows when quitting and re-opening apps. You can also install a third-party utility to control resume features on individual applications: RestoreMeNot or Application State Cleaner.
It is possible to completely stop the Resume feature although I'm unconvinced that it is that annoying. Nevertheless see the following:
If you have not yet done so you must first make your /Home/Library/ folder visible. Open the Terminal application in the Utilities folder. At the prompt paste the following command line:
chflags nohidden ~/Library
Press RETURN. Quit the Terminal application.
In the Finder navigate to the /Home/Library/Saved Application State/ folder. Delete the contents of the folder. Back up to the /Home/Library/ folder. Select the Saved Application State folder. Press COMMAND-I to open the Get Info window. In the Sharing and Permissions panel at the bottom click on the lock icon and authenticate. Set each of the listed entries to Read Only. Close the Get Info window.
Quit all open programs except the Finder (this is very important.) Next, navigate to the /Home/Library/Preferences/ByHost/ folder. Look for a .plist file with "com.apple.loginwindow." in the file name followed by some numbers in hexadecimal. Select the file. Press COMMAND-I to open the Get Info window and in the Sharing and Permissions panel click on the lock icon and authenticate. Set each of the listed entries to Read Only. Close the Get Info window. If you also find a file with the same filename but with a last extension of ".lockfile," then you should delete it.
The above should eliminate the Resume feature system-wide. Note that any future system updates or upgrades will likely undo these changes. You will then need to repeat this procedure assuming there are no major changes in OS X related to it.