The trauma that defined you
and the evil of "free will"
This is the most soul-baring piece I have ever shared… Already I predict the ridicule, the schadenfreude, which kind of prove my point.
It’s important for me to receive, not a free pass, but at least some consideration for the unfair circumstances I was born into.
“You failed because you didn’t try hard enough”, “You failed because you tried too hard”. Which is it? Or are we grasping at straws to blame people for circumstances beyond their control?
Accusing me of “freely willing my misfortune” is hostile and ill-intended. It’s demonic-level schadenfreude and sociopathic lack of empathy to kick people when they’re down, insisting they “deserved” or “knowingly chose” what they got, thus nudging them towards internalising and identifying with their failures.
They didn’t deserve their misery, just like you didn’t deserve your fortune; this is what you’re trying to deflect from, isn’t it?
You can evoke “free will” all you want to blame me for unfavourable circumstances beyond my control, but it doesn’t change the fact that, by doing so, you’re slyly suggesting that you deserved — claiming credit for — blessings you never earned. You can claim I’m looking for “excuses”, but I’m only asserting my deserved explanations, my extenuating circumstances. And you are simply my enemy if you deny me them.
Intro
I need to write this, express this anguish, not for anyone to read (other than the algorithm), but to get things out, and somewhat mitigate them. Self-therapy, if you will.
These are certain beats of my early years that served as butterfly effects to a shitstorm.
Here we go.
One of my greatest failures was the lack of focus and direction with regard to monetisable skills. The regret, disappointment, and shame that come from implied and direct comparisons keep me up at night. And it wasn’t even my fault, even though I am burdened with the responsibility.
It all starts from bad luck, bad parenting, bad environment, and it looks like I was cursed to suffer one crippling wound after another in the form of a pattern, or fate set by this simulation we call “reality”.
Let’s start from the beginning.
0. Depression
Let me set the stage first.
Before I begin this self-therapy session, it’s worth first framing it, and noting that I’ve been depressed all my life, even from early childhood; withdrawn, dissociated, watching from afar my life happen, and I illustrate why here. How depressed? I’ve been having serious thoughts of suicide from the age of 11, even arranging logistics and practicing how I’d do it — something about my enmeshing/devouring mother constantly confessing her thoughts of suicide and going on about life’s futility, confiding this only in me. I have no memory of her ever being affectionate to me as a child when I needed her, but I remember her being deliberately smothering in public to infantalise and humiliate me — the devouring mother’s instinct to sabotage her children’s social life so she can keep her all for herself forever. And my father was punishing me with extra cruelty for her choice to use me as her emotional buffer, which he saw as his replacement; an insult.
Or perhaps before that, the bedwetting from all the constant fight-or-flight in the home, then blamed and ridiculed for it, compared to all the “normal” kids (with normal parents) who didn’t wet their beds because they felt safe at home, something we never did. For us, home was a horror show; never-ending yelling, screaming, threats of kicking us out of the house to starve; not for being naughty (we were the most obedient, submissive, dissociated, scared little shits), but out of spite, parents transferring their trauma onto their children as the only way to soothe their pain. Parents caused us the anxiety that resulted in bedwetting, then blamed us, yelled at us, and humiliated us on top of having to suffer it all. Isn’t that unfair, to be blamed for your wounds by the people who inflicted them on you? And when you take that anxiety to school and wet your pants there too (multiple times), what chance do you have of ever catching up? Already, I predict the ridicule or condescending pity from this confession, which validates my point.
What can you do when your life begins with a domino effect of disaster, when your mere depression and low self-esteem make you unlikable, which brings more depression and low self-esteem, and on and on… What hope or chance do you have to excel when the brain grows and functions sub-optimally during your most life-determining years, your developmental window?
So, everything I confess after this makes more sense in this context. Being depressed — withdrawn, constantly afraid and ashamed, plagued by feelings of inferiority — didn’t make it easy to make friends, to have anyone to trust. I had no one to confide in, no one I could count on, no one in my corner, to feel safe next to, not even my older brother — especially not my older brother, yet another bully I couldn’t run away from. Imagine living in the same house as your schoolyard bullies: your brother, your parents.
No one to love you unconditionally — the minuscule parental approval I received was always conditional upon reluctantly submitting to their selfish demands, which always required me to deny what I truly valued.
I remember only cruelty from my parents; they even made things up just to scream and hit us, like “wrong answers to homework” that were in fact correct, ridiculing our “manhood” in the shower, even yelling at me for lathering the wrong side of the sponge.
No safety in the home, just yelling, fear, constant fight-or-flight, insecurity, fearing that my father would “kick us out to starve in the streets”, as he frequently and gleefully threatened, because we needed to “obey him under his roof”. What kind of character can you expect to build growing up like that? What kind of IQ or social intelligence can you expect to develop?
Crippling depression is a real debilitation, and I envy those who don’t recognise it as such — they never had to deal with it.
Maybe it was the relentlessly abusive parents (psychologically more than physically), with the level of intimidation and shaming that made my childhood a living nightmare. Maybe it was the overprotection, the feeling of imprisonment from being forbidden to play with other kids, and constant comparisons to “other kids” who always seemed to be “better than us” — I wonder why. Maybe it was the constant screaming and threatening father, or the constantly shaming, humiliating, ridiculing, and enmeshing mother, their words cutting deep into the soul, wounds that still plague my brothers and me. Especially with me, with whom my mother chose to be extra enmeshing, as she selected me to be her emotional support animal — something that would trigger my father’s subconscious jealousy, which explains why he was extra cruel to me, and deliberately sabotaged me every way he could (as you’ll see below).
And between my mother’s confessions of contemplating suicide and of regretting ever marrying my father (implying she regretted having us), I suppose things could have been a lot better for kids whose parents seemed to love them — affection I NEVER got as a child. It’s not the child’s role to provide emotional support to the parent — it’s the opposite. She confided this traumatising shit in me alone because I was “the most sensitive” or “I reminded her of her deceased father”. And yes, when I once asked my mother, “But if you never married, you wouldn’t have had us”, she laughed and said, “Yes, but I would have other kids”. So long ago, and it still cuts like a knife; a kid knowing that his mother regretted having him, and would sell him out in a second. What chance did I have with such existential issues from the start, knowing I was unwanted by the two people who should’ve wanted me the most? Why would anyone else want me?
When you start your life feeling unwanted, you will be unwanted — no one wants to be friends with people who don’t respect themselves. The more rejection you receive, the more evidence of inadequacy you pile up. And as you age, your internalised disrespect makes you actually worthy of rejection. Early life experiences are a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Those identity-defining words ended up being a self-fulfilling prophecy, and now, even after realising they meant nothing then, they do mean something now, because a lack of self-esteem brings experiences that validate it.
“Can we go outside and play with the other kids in the neighbourhood?”
“No! It’s too dangerous outside.”
“But other parents let their kids go.”
“Other parents don’t love their kids.”
And to show how messed up I was as a kid, I remember I used to envy the kids with divorced parents because of the attention and sympathy they received from other kids and teachers (not to mention their parents being kinder to their kids, trying to win them over after the separation). I used to pray to God for my parents to divorce. Begged my mother to divorce, and she said she couldn’t “because of her children”, as if I needed to feel guilty for her on top of it all. I was to blame for her suffering, having to endure an abusive husband so cruel, who — as she told me numerous times — beat her up while she was pregnant, causing her to lose the child she carried (after I was born). Or the husband she once dared to confront about his infidelities, and when he threatened to hit her again, she screamed for help from her horrified little kids. The child internalises the pain of the parent. Seriously, what chance do you have with such an upbringing?
At age seven, I was envious of the deaf kid at school because everyone showed him compassion and admiration. Same age, I even envied that bald little girl with terminal leukemia, who still breaks my heart thinking about. I was jealous of her because of the attention and acceptance she received at school — jealous of her even though we all knew she was dying. I would have traded a lifetime of rejection for a few days of such acceptance (I still would). If she’s anywhere now, I hope she forgives me. I feel guilty for not remembering her name.
1. Guitar
When I was seven, my parents decided to have my older brother and me start music lessons. We had no say in the matter, but it just so happened that I loved the idea (unlike my brother). I conclude now they did this to have something to brag about to their peers — my parents were never supportive. I know they offered us music lessons, not out of care, but only out of peer pressure (because other parents were bragging about their kids’ musical wonders), not because they cared for whatever we wanted (whatever we wanted was always wrong, in their eyes).
My brother chose the posh piano. I chose the lowly guitar. Even though at the time my parents were struggling financially, they got a loan to buy a brand new piano for my brother, while only borrowing an old guitar from my cousin Maria for me. It’s ok, I never felt jealous of my brother, despite blatant favouritism — on the contrary, I used to feel proud of my brother, despite him mirroring parental abuse towards me. But my parents’ favouritism was obvious.
Anyway, I loved the guitar. For once, I had something special about me — all the other kids already had something they were good at. As a shy, withdrawn, dissociated kid with zero ability to make friends, the guitar gave me a sense of identity and purpose. I loved it and was good at it; at the end of the semester, the head of the music school praised my performance. I was discovering myself. I was happy with myself for once.
A few days later, out of nowhere and without any warning, my furious mother barged into the room, yelling and screaming that I (supposedly) wasn’t practicing the guitar enough and that they would stop taking me to classes. She dramatically seized my guitar to “throw it out in the trash”, as she kept repeating, out of spite, as I begged her not to, asking ‘why’ with tears pouring. I still ask why I had to waste the chance to learn such a skill at an early age when it mattered most. Why?.. Especially when I was actually practicing and loving it?
As she rushed outside the house to throw away the guitar in the trash bin, it felt like part of me was cut off and disposed of forever. I couldn’t make sense of it. It was so illogical, so unfair. The excuse was “that I wasn’t studying enough,” when I had no idea why she thought that, when my instructors were very happy with me.
Years later, when I confronted her about this, she changed the excuse to “we didn’t have enough money”. That was a lie: my brother was still allowed and encouraged to carry on with his piano lessons, even though he hated the piano. But now I’ve concluded that my parents somehow got the idea in their heads that the piano-playing son was posh enough to brag about to their peers. But the bohemian guitar? Someone might have ridiculed them for that, or they somehow associated the guitar with rebellious hippies, drug addicts, and 80s satanic heavy metal (who knows?), and they felt it was a bad influence on me. Knowing my parents’ insecurities, this is the most likely case.
So, I retreated further back into myself, dissociated, discouraged, wronged, without a sense of self or self-ownership; nothing special about me, not allowed to pursue my values and interests, to own myself. I was again back to not being good at anything specific.
For all my youth, I’d have a phobia of guitars — literally every time I’d see an acoustic guitar, I would get anxiety, regret, fear, anger. I loved the sound of it, yes, and I loved the idea of playing it, but I was scared of the instrument. I was too insecure to start lessons by myself — I told myself it was too late to start (partly true), because late starters become amateurs at best — I thought, if I missed my chance to start early and be a pro, it wasn’t worth it. But the main reason was that I was traumatised by the guitar.
In my 20s, my older brother got a guitar (influenced by his friends) and abandoned it. So I “borrowed” it to fool around, but never actually bought one — I literally felt I didn’t deserve a guitar of my own, or lessons for that matter. In my late 30s, I flirted with the idea of buying one to just play as an old amateur, but something was blocking me. Subconsciously, I was still afraid that someone would take it away from me, and with it, my hopes and dreams. It wasn’t until I was well into my 40s that I finally got over my mental block and managed to buy a cheap guitar (deliberately cheap — expected to lose that investment). But it was too late to become good at it, too late to get that sense of identity and efficacy I so desperately needed as a child.
Plus, as you’ll discover reading below, something about a finger deformity limits my ability to improve at the guitar. You see, again, there isn’t much under our control in this life.
2. Architecture
A few years later, my favourite uncle visited us from England. I loved him because he gave us attention and acknowledgement that our parents never did. I looked up to him, and since he was an architect, he brought me a children’s book on architecture. I still remember it. It mesmerised me. It had all those landmark buildings, and the steps to sketch them. Not even close to scientific, but it was enough to get me to discover this value of mine: hard lines and solid structure, engineering, of design. Solidity and firmness were things I needed, feeling so insecure and unsafe all the time.
Architecture became a solid goal, a direction, something to look forward to, a drive. So, I let it sink in, and I became determined: I decided I wanted to be an architect when I grew up.
But when I — stupid me — decided to announce that to my father, he cut my wings, as he always did: “You? An architect? You can’t be an architect. You can’t draw well. You aren’t gifted. You will never make it. They won’t take you. You cannot be an architect”. I’m certain he discouraged me because he didn’t want me getting any influence from my uncle, whom he probably envied. But this discouragement was enough to dissuade me. I believed it, because for a son, the word of the father is the Word of God — we are biologically programmed and cursed by nature to be this way. It’s not free will; it’s not our fault.
We don’t have much control over how certain people’s words and actions affect us. We are programmed this way.
So, I gave up on the path of architecture and never reconsidered it. If anything, I became resentful of the topic, as it became a reminder of a weakness (which wasn’t real, in the end). Again, I was without purpose, without direction, without motivation, without a craft to focus on, without anything that could drive me and define me. I was again dissociated because I had nothing grounding me in a solid identity.
3. Grades
I’ve written before about an experience that made a significant impact on me and was a meaningful catalyst in my life’s path. I was a straight-A student until the age of 13. At age 12, at the end of the school year, I was among the few students honoured for their top grades. Grades were extremely important to my parents, especially to my father, who believed our grades reflected his status. We had to be perfect students for him to show off; no matter if his children were depressed, dissociated, bullied, and lacking social intelligence and communication skills. His children were but an extension of his image, so it was our obligation to do anything for him. We had no self-ownership, no right to want anything for ourselves.
But when he blatantly refused to congratulate me that day (even though the whole school did) — claiming that giving me any credit would make me feel unchallenged and unmotivated — well, I in fact felt demotivated. Not only was his mindset low-IQ, but it was also uneducated (a doctor, no less). I had no positive feedback for my efforts, no validation of the “good student” identity — I only had ridicule from peers for being a nerd and the vague, meaningless pats on the back by faceless teachers whose opinion wasn’t on top of my list. And at that age, especially without any emotional support system, I needed acceptance from my peers more than anything. I needed to be respected by the boys my age, the ones who bullied me constantly (verbally, more than physically — intimidation is usually worse than the pain of the actual threat carried out).
We all need unconditional support from others before we can love ourselves; this is the job of the parents. If your parents deny you acceptance, you then need it from others to a greater degree. And I couldn’t even get that.
So, at the start of the next year, I was already demotivated.
One of the first days of school that year, the assistant principal walked in and ordered me — with his austere, militaristic tone — to pack my stuff and follow him. I was terrified, projecting all my fears from home, always feeling like I did something wrong. What was I blamed for this time? I didn’t even dare to ask him. I just withdrew even more into myself and blindly followed him.
He led me to another classroom, opened the door, interrupted the teacher and announced that, from now on, I was going to be part of that class — just like my parents, always talking about me but never to me while I was present.
The new class was full of overachievers: cool kids, smart kids, kids who seemed much better than me, much more mature for their age. I felt immensely insecure because my previous class was full of insecure losers like me, and I felt more comfortable (the two class bullies didn’t seem to mind me much, so I felt relatively safe and lucky to have found myself there.
But this new class? They weren’t bad kids, but I saw them as threats due to my crippling insecurity — so much better than me, I felt they were putting me down simply by comparison.
I projected my fears and insecurities from home onto my new classmates, and I felt even more marginalised and withdrawn. The irony is that the new class included my crush from elementary school — my childhood love. Instead of feeling joy to be closer to her, when I stood there at the door — the timid new class member — I felt fear and inadequacy facing her. Even though she was the sweetest and kindest to me until then in elementary school, I felt I was inadequate and had nothing to offer her. Hating myself just like my parents taught me to, I decided that the best thing I had to offer her was to dissociate and stay away from her. But there she was now, here reminding me of my unworthiness of her.
I had decided to abandon any hope of being with her. I didn’t have the audacity to want her before first achieving acceptance from parents and peers; and myself. So I’d love her from a distance and resist all thoughts of her. I think, having dissociated and fallen into a totally passive existence, I abandoned her in my mind subconsciously due to all my self-loathing. I remember telling myself that only a fool would want to be with me. And I loved and respected her too much to see her as a fool. Someone as lowly as I just thinking about her was an insult to her. And the mere act of thinking so lowly about myself made me actually lowly.
Anyway, back to the changing of classes and being plunged into a new group of kids where I felt even more insecure.
It turned out that my parents had asked the school to transfer me to a different class, a better class with better students, supposedly because I was getting “bad influences”. The thing is, I felt safe in the previous group of kids because they were kind of losers like me. Yes, they weren’t the best students, but I felt safe in mediocrity. So, I dissociated more — I felt unsafe next to the kids I spent most of my time with, and I never felt safe at home either. Life was a nightmare.
Either the first day I switched classes or the next, there was an early test (in religious education, of all fucking subjects). I wasn’t prepared. Nobody had told me they were expecting it. The curriculum had nothing to do with what we’d covered so far in the previous class (it was the teacher’s own curriculum about the bullshit items they use in churches, what they’re called and what they’re used for — utter nonsense). I didn’t know any of the answers. It reminded me of the vicious scolding I received in Sunday school for not knowing by heart a specific prayer. Religion feeds on guilt and shame.
Anyway, I was so conditioned to blame myself for anything that I couldn’t even ask the teacher for an exemption due to my special circumstance: always taught to be over-accountable, to take on the burden of someone else’s responsibility, because whenever we got sick, our mother would scream at us, as if it were our fault. So we pretended not to be sick, not to be hurt, not to seek help, not to ask for credit for extenuating circumstances. We could never assert ourselves because we were conditioned to believe we were always in the wrong.
But what hurt the most was that nobody in the class came to my aid to tell the teacher that I was new there. Not the class president, not my crush. Sure, it wasn’t their responsibility, but still, I felt even more marginalised.
When the test results came in, I got a 5 out of 20; something that completely shattered my identity as the “good student”. I was shocked. I knew I didn’t do well, but 5 — a failing mark? I remember my heart racing, feeling a mixture of sadness, anger, and horror at what my father would do to me. He was disappointed in me for getting two Bs out of all As compared to the previous year… What would he say now?
I completely withdrew inward. I lost myself totally. I instantly adopted the new identity of the neglectful student.
What followed that year was as close to hell — that’s the word I used in my mind to describe my life at the time. Constant abuse from my father: screaming, eruptions, beatings, constant berating, calling me “useless” every time he saw me, so I could embed it and believe it. You see, he claimed I was embarrassing him with my less-than-ideal grades: “You’ve embarrassed me in front of the teachers!” “Who will I dare show my face to with your grades?” “You’ve turned into a bad boy!” he kept saying and saying.
One of his more elaborate punishments was forcing me to see a psychologist, just to “prove” to me I was insane — something he loved to call me. “You’re insane. You don’t get good marks. It means you’re not well in the head”. When most other kids had encouraging fathers telling them they were the best, I had the exact opposite, an insanely cruel father who thought I was crazy for getting Bs instead of As — only me, not other students with even worse marks than me. The shame and stigma of “seeing a psychologist” at that age — of being seen as an insane person by my family — was yet another burden I needed to carry. And the worst part? When he took me to this psychologist, and the psychologist asked what my problem was, and my father said “he doesn’t study”, the psychologist chose to side with my father, not me. Instead of telling my father that there was nothing wrong with me, he went along with the charade. Instead of telling my father that it was he who needed a psychologist — no, a psychiatrist — he chose to “consult” me, instruct me to “listen to my parents” and “do as I was told”. He also told my father to “motivate” me by bribing me: they got me a cheap watch and told me it was conditional upon my improving my grades. Not only did I not improve my grades, but they got worse and worse. I still have that watch. Still works.
And the more my father berated me, the more I identified with the shaming, the humiliation, and the more identity-validating behaviour I sought. I started hanging out with the only two kids in the class who were total losers like me, worse than me. They dragged me even lower with their delinquency. I had no self. I was lost. I had given up. I started swearing, even bullying a couple of weaker kids. I lost myself completely.
And the cherry on top? My crush saw me one day behaving like a punk (I think I was swearing), and she angrily said to me, word for word, just like my father: “You’ve turned into a bad boy!” That was the final rejection and validation I needed to fully identify as “a bad boy”. I think that moment was when I completely withdrew my true self and made space for the fake persona to take over; the self-destructive false self, because all I remember feeling was a striking sense of emotional numbness, as if this rejection made sense — total detachment from my feelings. Her rejection was the final nail in the coffin of my true self. It was then that I fully stepped into the false self, the self-loathing punk, someone who subconsciously sought self-destructive paths and behaviours just so he could validate his corrupt identity and finally feel like a distinct individual. If horribleness were all I had to define me, then horribleness it would be.
Hers was the kind of rejection I needed to blind myself to. So, from that moment, I totally stayed away from her, even though she was my childhood love, one of the few people who accepted me as I truly was — not as I became. I betrayed her acceptance so I could act like a macho punk in hopes of winning the acceptance of people who didn’t matter. Anyway, from that moment, I was too ashamed to even talk to her, look at her, or think of her. Her words crushed me, but I never blamed her. Still, I never had the gall to talk to her again until decades later… which part of me regrets. No point scratching old wounds.
4. Fitness
Physical abuse from the home and the school wasn’t nearly as damaging to me as psychological abuse: the neglect, the intimidation, the shaming, the guilt-tripping, the rejection, the constant humiliation, the oppression and suppression.
I remember timidly asking my parents whether I could do gymnastics classes or maybe some karate, because I could see how the kids who knew sports were more confident, more admired.
“Karate?” my father screamed. “My children will not be taught violence. All that is for the bad kids whose parents are lowlives”.
But I didn’t want to commit violence — I needed to prevent it. `4
So, without the sense of safety knowing I could protect myself, I was struck in perpetual fear in the home, in the schoolyard, never having the opportunity to learn how to defend myself, how to believe in myself. I thought that playing video games like Mortal Kombat would help me learn how to fight — not to abuse others, but to just feel safer.
My father never taught me anything. All the other kids’ fathers taught them football; I kicked the football around once with my tomboy cousin: a girl gave me my first and only football lesson.
My father forbade all sports. He said, “Sports are for bad kids. Sports steal time from studying. You have no other purpose than studying! I feed you so you study and obey me.” This was from the mouth of a doctor, no less, who was supposed to know about health and parenting.
However, one of the few things I was allowed to do — being overprotected and forbidden to play outside with other kids — was watch a lot of movies, dissociating further, detaching from reality, falling deeper into my disconnected fantasy bubble. Thanks to Rocky and Van Damme training montages, I learned a few simple exercises — pushups, situps, simple weight lifts. So I’d borrow those small dumbbells my mother had bought on offer and never used, and I’d clumsily work out in dark rooms whenever my parents and older brother were away. They’d have shamed and ridiculed me if they saw me lift weights.
At age 14, I became more brazen. I stole money from my mother’s purse and walked in, all by myself, into the neighbourhood gym — an old-school gym full of loud, buff dudes and rusty weights. Still, I manned up and owned it, and I still admire that kid for having the courage to walk in there all alone, without any emotional backing from anyone.
Later, I lied to my parents that my teachers recommended basketball classes to help with my development. I knew how to manipulate my parents now — appeal to authority to persuade them. So, my parents conceded and agreed to give me money to enroll. I went to basketball classes for a month or so, but I was so bad at it (having had no father to teach me, or no permission to play with kids outside) that the instructors had to group me with the smaller kids, who were still better than I was, and were making fun of me. Imagine being ridiculed by kids 2-3 years younger than you. I couldn’t take the humiliation, so I quit and instead used the money to resume the gym. I kept lying to my parents that I was going to basketball classes, when in fact I was going to the gym. Some people don’t deserve the truth, and they owed me at least that.
But my parents disapproved of the gym. They were under the false belief that “lifting weights made kids short”, a pseudoscientific myth that is abundantly debunked. If anything, it’s the opposite. I wanted to come clean and admit I was going to the gym, because I couldn’t take the lies. I asked them if I could join the gym (even though I was already going there in secret), and they kept attacking me, intimidating me, and accusing me of being difficult and irrational. My older brother, too, who always took my parents’ side in berating me, blaming me for ‘unsettling the family’. Learn to assert yourself with such shitty people around you.
There I was, trying something new that I valued, and again, no one close to me was supportive — quite the opposite. At least I was getting some meaningless respect from the kids at school, but not from the people who really mattered; not from people who weren’t impressed by thick arms and buff chests. At least, getting a bit muscular for that age helped me feel a bit safer. But not before I was done with puberty blockers…
5. Puberty blockers
It’s hard for me to admit, but at age 14, my father injected my brothers and me with puberty blockers, as part of “research” he was mindlessly proud to contribute to. The fucking idiot. My father used his own children as Guinea pigs so that the other doctors who duped him could take massive grants — and he patted himself on the back for being a contributor to “science”. The fucking idiot.
It’s a good thing I didn’t know at the time what they truly were — used for sex-change — because it would have made a worse psychological impact. He told us it was to “prolong puberty” so that we could have more time to grow taller than other kids. The irony is that puberty blockers, in fact, inhibit development on all levels. The fucking idiot.
So, as soon as I starter getting into fitness, my growth was stunted by puberty blockers. When all the boys my age began to develop manly traits, I was wondering why my body looked like a pear, and I was crazy ashamed of it. I never understood why until my thirties.
I won’t stay on this topic much. Even though I had always been sensitive and had a proclivity towards crippling depression and dissociation, who knows the extent of the mental damage puberty blockers have done to me, not to mention physical. Yes, physical damage too: I am burdened with subtle — but real — structural imbalances and deformities, not to mention less-than-potential stature. This was yet another determining limitation on a mental, hormonal, and physical level. It’s undeniable — the life-defining harm from this heartburning injustice I was burdened with, always feeling even more insecure about my obviously stunted development, let alone the effects of that unnecessary toxicity.
Puberty blockers are used for sex-change operations — thank goodness, I found out about this fact much later in life, when I was more mature. Otherwise, who knows how much worse things would’ve been for my self-esteem had I known this earlier at a younger and more impressionable age? Still, even after finding out later, I keep wrestling with the injustice of it all, and all my bodily imbalances and deformities made sense.
6. School direction
The school system at the time, where I grew up, was a bit limiting. At age 14, I had to choose a “direction” for the last three years of high school, which narrowed down the subjects I’d have to study. And I didn’t know that I could always study after school to get into any university on my terms. I always thought, as my father kept reminding me, that I could never study without his financial support. He paid, so he had control. He’d rather see his kids fail so that they stay reliant upon and needy of him rather than see them happy and independent.
I wanted to take the more practical and broader school direction, which included subjects like advanced physics, chemistry, and mathematics. It was the logical choice: since it was too soon for me to choose a university course, casting a broader net made sense. That could have opened doors to engineering and the real sciences: subjects with inherent structure, something I desperately needed.
I was ready to sign up for that until my father, who never ever talked directly to me for any reason other than to humiliate me, asked me what I was going to choose. I said I was going to choose the practical direction, and again, just as he did when I shared my desire to follow architecture years back, he dissuaded me: “You? You, follow the practical direction? You can’t. You’ll never make it. You don’t have the grades. The practical direction is for good students only. You’re useless. The practical direction is not for students like you. You don’t have what it takes. You won’t finish school if you choose that direction, and then you will never be able to graduate. Listen to me, better choose something easier, otherwise you’ll never finish school.” He said it with such conviction, spite, and glee, getting high on schadenfreude, enjoying yet another opportunity for a life-crippling putdown. I still hate myself for believing him.
Again, I made the horrendous mistake of believing the putdowns of a cruel father, of listening to him. I believed the fear. I felt I would fail school if I aimed too high. And this is a pattern I’ve noticed which supports my belief in simulation theory: Every single time I aim high, life ALWAYS puts me back in my place, as if there are predetermined boundaries to my path.
No, it wasn’t “free will” — I never chose to be biologically programmed to desperately need parental approval, nor did I ever choose such psychotic parents in an environment with absolutely zero support system.
So, the next huge mistake I made was to ask my older brother (a replica of the abusive father) what the next-best direction was. And he said, “the economic direction”. I never knew what the hell economics was, nor accounting, nor finance, nor business. Never cared for them, never had an interest. There is nothing more depressing and limiting than economics; understanding how messed up the world is, and having no power to do anything about it. Plus, limited career prospects.
And just like that, at the age of 14, subtle discouragement carved a career direction and life path for me. And I didn’t even know how bad that path was until much later along the way, when it was too late to turn back or switch paths. Yes, age is a factor — nobody gives you second chances when they can give those chances as firsts to others without a track record of failure.
7. No job for you
When I was of legal age to work, I asked permission from my parents to get a job — yes, we needed permission for everything. Of course, I could see the other kids who had weekend or summer jobs, and how confident and empowered they were. They had jobs even before the legal age, but my parents would never allow that; too much respect for “authority”.
But when I was at least legally allowed to work, I asked for permission to look for a job. I needed permission in a household of terror. My father went ballistic! “No way!” he said. I wasn’t allowed to work while “under his roof” because, in his own words, “people would think that he wasn’t making enough money, and thus had to send his kids to work”. That was insane, looking back now. He would feel embarrassed if — God forbid — his kids worked! Besides, he added, that “working would interfere with studying”, and according to him, “our existence had no purpose other than studying hard to get into university”. And my father loved knowing we were helplessly dependent on him.
So, while other kids were getting the confidence, social skills, self-ownership, and self-esteem from working and earning from a young age, I missed out on that, too. Do you see a pattern here?
I wish I knew I could just leave home and live on my own and finish school on my own. I didn’t know I could. I never saw an example of that. I never believed this was achievable. I never saw it as an option. How would it be “free will” when that was my skewed perception of the world?
8. University degree
Another career-condemning experience was in the last year of school when I had to choose a university direction. Again, just like three years prior (when choosing a school direction), my father initiated a conversation with me when he wouldn’t otherwise.
“What are your university choices?” he interrogated.
Timidly, I replied, “Well, I like working out. Maybe sports science.”
“Don’t even think about it!” These were his exact words. “You want to just run a gym? We’re full of gyms. It’s not a real job. You won’t succeed. You’ll be a nobody just like the gym owner next door. Choose something else. Well?”
I thought for a bit and said, “Well, I like computers.”
“Computers? And just be a computer repair guy? There is no future in computers. Choose something else.”
Ironically, my father, someone who, in the 2000s, thought that “there was no future in computers”, also happens to consider himself to be highly intelligent.
So I gave up. I said: “With my school subjects, the only thing left for me is economics”.
“Yes, you should study economics. Start applying now.”
And that was it, as if he knew anything about the career prospects of something like that, or whether I valued it enough to want to work hard at it. In retrospect, I see it as sabotage; he wanted to sabotage me.
I didn’t choose that direction because I was good at it, nor because I valued it, nor because I had a plan, a direction, an aspiration to accomplish something. It was just the result of letdown after letdown. It was the consequence of giving up on myself again just to appease the eternally dissatisfied father, the insecure manipulator who deliberately withdraws his meaningless approval to get a power trip out of abusing his children — exploiting the circumstantial power given to him by nature, the power of the parent over the child. Where’s the “free will” in that?
You see, what chance do you stand when you are forbidden to pursue the things you believe in from a very young age? And then when you’re at the age when you can actually pursue them on your own, it’s too late to believe in them, to expect a payoff to a late start.
9. Army
Immediately after school, I was conscripted to the army of the shithole country I happened to grow up in. More than two years wasted with even more constant abuse and ritualistic humiliation. I hate with a passion everything that is military because I have lived it. And conscription is literal slavery; there is no debate.
But when you enter such an environment without any support system, absolutely no friends, no girlfriend, no supportive parents, it plays a number on you. All you have is constant, unending intimidation, threats, humiliation, indignity, and denigration. As if I needed even more trauma.
Not worth dwelling on this subject even more. The military is satanic, and despite the propaganda designed to brainwash us into believing it’s supposedly “necessary”, there is no duty, honour, valour, or necessity in any military. Not one bit.
10. Stupid studies masters
Not following your identity is like killing yourself; you live like a zombie. You aren’t ‘you’, and people can smell your self-loathing. So it attracts bullying, disrespect, ridicule, and even hate — not because you harmed them, but because, if you hate yourself, then they assume you’re worthy of their hate too. Yes, all my life; most people tend to hate me at first sight, not because I did anything to them, but because I come across as depressing, unsettling, and I make them uncomfortable. Maybe I remind them of their own messed-up mentality — who knows? But just like those times I was beaten up just trying to open a conversation with groups of kids I thought I wanted to be friends with… same in adulthood: almost every time I try to connect, I am met with epic rejection, which builds up a voice telling me “better not to try anything again”.
Plus, when you’re like that, you attract people who similarly hate themselves, and they either drag you down or you feed on each other in pathetic codependency. This was my young adulthood.
Years wasted in the mandatory army, then a useless university course… wasting time, energy, money, and dignity on things I hated, being in places I didn’t want to be, interacting with people I never chose, and forced to live situations that rewarded none of my effort. I had wasted my youth not earning any truly monetisable skill — except for being a carpenter’s assistant part-time, an idiot who was too insecure to teach me more than I needed to know… I wasn’t confident I could get any other job, so I settled.
My father demanded that I do two — not one — post-graduate courses. He chose them for me, and he felt entitled to my submission, reminding me how much he’d pay for them. Since I was broken more than ever, the only thing left was — finally — my father’s approval. So I again submitted to him, wasted another two years of self-denial and nothingness.
And then my father had the gall to blame me for not finding “a proper job” right after I finished the totally useless “academic” course he chose for me. That’s when I finally rebelled — too late. I told him to fuck off and that I had wasted my life on his bullshit advice. He kicked me out of the house and threatened to call the police for supposedly “threatening to beat him,” as he said — the fucking liar. Imagine your father lying to get you in trouble with the violence of the state, the sadist.
So I left and went to stay with my girlfriend at the time, a random blessing I just happened to have at the time, a blessing which I truly did not deserve. Then I kept on working as a lowly bartender, but I at least I was financially and emotionally independent. And I had one last thing to look forward to.
11. Bank job
My last hope was this privileged job at a bank. It was one of the biggest banks in the country, and the only one that didn’t require banking and finance qualifications to apply. Instead, they required applicants to go through rigorous examination processes, which included IQ tests, aptitude tests, presentation skills, some economics, and on-the-spot decision-making. These exams took months to complete, and they were stressful to say the least.
But I excelled. I got a letter. The HR manager called me up to congratulate me and tell me I finished in the top three out of more than 1800 applicants. She asked if I was still interested in the role, and if so, I should be ready to receive an offer soon. It was a blessing! Finally, I could get a break. Finally, I could get respect from others and from myself.
Months pass. Nothing. An acquaintance who happened to work at that bank called me up. She said the first six hires didn’t include me. I knew what went on. I called the HR manager. When I got hold of her, she practically admitted it was more about nepotism than merit. Thanks a lot. Why the fuck didn’t you tell me that earlier? Then I wouldn’t have had all this false hope, you fucking bitch. And the funny thing is, nobody acknowledges this great achievement of mine, and this great injustice against me. Nobody gave me credit for anything. Nobody.
This was again another experience that “put me in my place”. Every time I aim high, this simulation kicks me down, where my purpose is.
As if I need to learn more helplessness and a feeling of total lack of control over a reality that is more hostile to me than others. Remind me never to take an exam again. Meaningless. All meaningless. What new endeavour can you pursue after realising that nothing is achieved without the right connections that will favour you at the expense of others? Why would I waste more time, effort, money, and hope on even more wasted degrees, wasted exams, wasted attempts?
And then I surrendered to the alcohol, the bad women, the reinvention of myself as yet another fake persona, the loser barman who gets drunk all the time. Funny enough, I was so good at that I became general manager within two years, but that wasn’t me either.
12. Sleep
I always had a problem sleeping. Something about those eruptions of rage in the house, every fucking day, several times a day, most days. You develop an oversensitive nervous system, and you can’t sleep easily. Even if you do, it doesn’t last long. And sleep got worse and worse, with white hairs showing up rapidly from age 19.
Fatigue didn’t make any difference. In fact, the more tired I was, the harder it was to sleep. And waking up from that little, low-quality sleep every day still? I still feel more tired than any other part of the day.
No diet, supplement, or pharmaceutical could help much. Not even weed. No workouts, nothing, even though I still work out sub-optimally, just for the escapism. Nothing helps. It’s a condition. I tried. Always jumpy, constantly oversensitive to light and sound. There’s no help. I’ve tried.
Tell me again how we’re on an even playing field, and how everything is my fault, when you don’t even know what it’s like living like this? And as I age, it gets worse and worse.
13. Ripple effects
Good luck trying to start a career, make friends, network, or meet good women in your twenties with all this baggage. And the more you age, the more emotional baggage accumulates, since you haven’t achieved what is expected of you to have achieved at that age. Naturally, people will avoid your negativity, employers will see your “lack of direction” in your CV, and potential spouses will not feel safe next to you. And I don’t blame them.
Are these “excuses”? Are these blaming others to absolve myself? No, I hold myself accountable because I am the one cursed to live my life. I don’t “blame” others, because they had no free will in how badly they treated me either, but I do hold them accountable for the damage they caused me, because someone has to be.
You see, when someone orders you to “take responsibility”, it’s often an attempt to evade their responsibility for how they, in fact, wronged you. Or at least, it’s a way for them to escape the responsibility for not showing any compassion for you when they owed it to you.
Unmet childhood needs never stop plaguing you. You can work around them, or learn to manage them, but they never go away — you just play catch-up after that. For example, my mother, in her 70s, is still traumatised by and still expresses great sorrow for being abandoned by her parents. She was sent off to a different country to live with her hostile aunt. She grew up seeing herself as Cinderella, but instead of getting the prince, she was married off to Lord Farquaad.
Psychological trauma never heals — at best, you learn to live with it. It’s helpful to acknowledge this, otherwise you will never learn to manage your trauma if you;re deluding yourself “you’re healed”. You can manage trauma, but you can never be free from it, like a spinal cord injury. But you must accept trauma is beyond healing, otherwise you’ll blind yourself to it, and then you’ll be totally at its mercy.
Note: I forgave my parents, not because they asked for forgiveness, not because they deserved it, and not because I’m holier-than-thou. I forgave them because it was the healthy thing for me to do, to get closure, and to accept the people I was biologically programmed to need, because such is our human nature — such are the roles our nervous system assigns to them. I forgave them to get a glimmer of “family” in their old, humbler age. I forgave, but didn’t absolve them. They’re not off the hook. They are still responsible for the trauma they inflicted on their children, just like their parents are responsible for the trauma they inflicted on them. They have explanations, but they don’t have excuses. They are responsible, but I no longer blame them. This is forgiveness without absolution.
The burden of unfair expectations
But how much do you expect someone to achieve when each failure is a negative feedback loop, a negative spiral, a self-sustained vicious cycle of validating the identity of someone who isn't worth good things? How hard can anyone work when they have nothing to look forward to, when they don't have or believe they'll have something to fight for?
Imagine having all that to burden you while trying to maintain a happy, friendly, approachable demeanour. Imagine being weighed down like this, while expected to have genuine confidence, self-esteem, friends, a network, and a promising career path.
For most of my life, I had assumed that everyone had the same life experience as me. But they didn’t — most I know had it much, much better, except perhaps for the two kids I knew from elementary school who ended up killing themselves.
When you’ve had my life — a life like what I’ve described above and no one will ever read, you are destined to be withdrawn. Any attempt to “fake it 'till you make it” will appear fake and disingenuous; people will dislike you either way. Because the world is so accustomed to fake positivity and pretentious cheerfulness, when they see you sad and introverted, they perceive you as hostile.
And then you wonder, not how to improve your life, but what might be available for you to do… It’s not about not wanting to work hard; it's about not seeing any available path in front of you.
What can you realistically expect to accomplish when you start life with a bad mindset, which guarantees failure, and then as failures pile up, the negative mindset solidifies more and more, and on and on this goes in an inescapable spiral of negativity that drags you down? What can you do when you push away the few people who show interest in you, because it isn’t fair for them to be with someone with suicidal thoughts?
There is no free will, not really
You can argue that this trauma was not defining. But if you had the same trauma, you would have been defined by it too. And if not, then you admit you had some kind of special talent or genetic predisposition to absorbing trauma, thus again confessing that “free will” had nothing to do with it.
Sure, you can work with trauma, but when others leap without as much, you play catch-up.
It’s easy to condemn others when things come easily to you. Easy to claim you worked hard when you find yourself on an easy road. Easy to accuse others of not working hard enough when you never had to work too hard yourself. Perhaps this is why people are so quick to condemn the unfortunate: to hide their own fortunes.
Denying free will does not equate with denying accountability. You are accountable for your mistakes because you need to live with them, plus accountability shows you your power, where you could have done better. You are also accountable for hurting others, despite your unfree will. Why? Because their unfree will also compels them to resent you for hurting them. But the denial of free will has one benefit: self-accountability without self-blame. Because once you tell yourself you were free to will anything, and you “willed misery”, then you will be defined by it. Ironically, insisting on “free will” is the most fatalistic thing you can do. While denying free will at least gives you the benefit of the doubt that you could have done better under different circumstances. Therefore, by rejecting the notion of free will, you are more free to be someone better.
Yes, you can still work hard despite your circumstances, but how far do you think you can go when every attempt to be confident and approachable comes across as fake and disingenuous, and repels people even more than being your true, depressed self? How much can you achieve when people either dismiss you for being unskilled, or the opposite: begrudge you for unintentionally showing them up? Where can you go when nobody wants you (nobody who can help you for a change, at least)? You’d be naive to think you could ever stand a chance at meeting your full potential had you not your limitations. And just knowing that no matter how hard you work, you can expect less, is enough to demotivate you further. The hard work we put in things is analogous to what we expect to get: the pain you tolerate is proportionate to the gain you can expect.
The ask
I just wrote this so that you don’t judge me too harshly. I don’t expect anyone to read this, not fully anyway. I know it’s long. But knowing it’s out there, and perhaps the singularity might pick it up and learn from it, is enough. The pain of writing it was worth it.
I don’t need any more condemnation and shaming for writing this. As if my self-esteem needed any more battering, when the best I could ever achieve was to try to play catch-up in a race for which I missed the starting gun and had to run with chains weighing me down.
When other kids looked good and played outside to get well-built while having fun and making friends, I was stuck at home with underdeveloped calves, height, and IQ. Instead of getting a healthier body and mind, I got flat feet, myopia, learned helplessness, and cripplingly low confidence, and then expected to excel, and was battered for not succeeding.
When you have a defensive, tormented expression ingrained permanently on your face, people perceive you as hostile, so good luck making friends and connections. Funny how people who look good (perhaps the most lucrative, door-opening advantage you can have in life) insist that “it’s all free will,” supposedly.
When other kids were out playing football, learning to negotiate and resolve disputes, acquire social skills, build confidence, become assertive, test their leadership, and earn the social IQ to make friends, I was imprisoned at home, where the only time I wasn’t neglected was when I was abused. Wasn’t even allowed to pursue music, fitness, or computers at home — nothing.
All that time, I wondered why other kids’ parents loved them and trusted them so much to let them be themselves, to allow them to go out for just a bit of time after school and play with other kids. I wondered how much better those kids must have been to merit such love from their parents, and deserve the cool sports shoes, the cool backpacks, the cool extracurricular activities, or just simple affection, play, and acknowledgement I so desperately needed from my parents.
I was thrown with a handicap in a rigged game, and I give credit to myself for that injustice. But others (who I know now don’t matter) blame me for losing, while expecting me to win on their terms. They do this to deflect from the fact that they had a privilege. And then they accused me of being “lazy” or “making excuses” or “not taking accountability” right after being ridiculed for my lack of accomplishment. I don’t see them ever humbling themselves for the unearned, undeserved advantages they had over me. I never blamed them for that. It’s not fair. What the hell did you expect? How could I ever accomplish much when all that’s ever driven me was false hope for things I never stood a chance at?
I claim recognition — credit for my misfortune. Others with less trauma ended up addicted to hard drugs or just killing themselves. I did ok, considering.
Sure, even with worse trauma than mine, there is always something you can do. But anything after that is just playing catch-up, and it’s insane to hold everyone to the same standard, without first acknowledging extenuating circumstances, as we do in sports, for example.
That little girl with terminal leukemia never asked for excuses, but she did deserve our consideration. We couldn’t expect her to look as pretty as the other girls; poor thing had no hair left towards the end. When someone can’t walk, he can do his best in life, but don’t batter him for not measuring up to NBA stars, especially not when it was you, of all people, who broke his legs in the first place.
I’m not asking for sympathy from pity. I’m asking for permission not to feel self-pity. I’m asking — only from the people who matter, whom I choose to have close to me — to give me some credit for my misfortune… not a free pass, not excuses or absolution for my stupid decisions and for how horribly I’ve treated people, but at least some recognition of the chains I had slowing me down in this rat race, and thus to be a bit lenient before condemning me. That is all.
Because you don’t help me when you insist I had full control over my life, and I still chose to mess it up. There is something deterministic and fatalistic about identifying with my misery.
It’s important to me that the people I choose to have close to me understand, and thus avoid condemning me.
I know I would have done slightly better had I not been condemned for being condemned.
Life has been a collection of unnecessary, unutilised trauma and humiliation; unmet needs and false hope that kept me hanging on to a burning lifeline. It wasn’t worth it.
My only driver in life has always proven to be false hope.
Spare me your pop-psychology diagnoses.
P.S.: If I could choose, I’d rather have a fate like that of the innocent girl with leukemia, just a few years of a childhood full of love and innocence, feeling accepted, and leaving this world thinking it was a beautiful one, like in the mind of a pure seven-year-old. I’d give up every single day I’ve had since that time. The only reason I’m still here is that I’m desperately seeking some meaning for this meaningless life, something to have made it worth it (that’s why I write here, to perhaps provide useful insight, if I can). But that hope is dwindling fast.