boot_up

I clearly remember bursting out to my group therapy facilitator, asking why there isn't a manual for life. I was deep in the psychic trenches then, trying to distinguish between what's right and what's wrong, and I was just dead tired. Why isn't there a manual written for life?! How are we supposed to be good human beings… ? Well, she answered, there's no such thing.

Now, many years later, I would argue that being the manual is your parents' job—they should be the interpreters of life for you, a way to help you manage the unbearable complexity of the ultimate source code. But some interpreters are flawed. So, I had to build my own, for the human stack.

This manual is the essence of what I learned from over five years of therapy and countless hours of obsessive (and a tiny bit narcissistic) self-reflection. I wish I could just bill this out to my alcoholic dad—but he's dead. Of course, before he died, he had the courtesy of telling me he never really wanted me. I was 14, Dad—for fuck's sake. Great timing. Watching him go in the next couple of years took a toll on me. Of course, back then I didn't know it, but I started to grow distant from my emotions. I could even take a twisted sort of pleasure in detaching myself from the cold reality that he never really loved me.

I wish I could say, "But at least I had Mom." But Mom left me with my brother around that time. Without saying a word, she just disappeared into thin air, not answering my gazillion desperate phone calls. God, I was worried for her. I think we didn't speak for a year after that. Since then, I've become economically self-sufficient and emotionally avoidant.

If I put myself back in my old shoes, all I remember is the uncomfortable numbness I felt. The cold, harsh reality that my mom didn't love me either weighed on my fragile soul, so I built even thicker walls. I observed my life as it went by.

The narcissistic part of me wishes I could say that life suddenly got better and I saved myself. But that's not true. I think I could have easily grown so detached from carrying these heavy stones in my stomach that I would have developed clinical-level depression, just like my mother.

But I got really lucky. I became deeply interested in the topic of identity at a really early age. Then, at uni, I gravitated towards team building. And when my boss—whom I deeply admired—saw the burning desperation in me to prove that I was worthy, he just sent me to an expert human debugger. A therapist.

In my psychodrama group, I started the very uncomfortable journey of getting closer and closer to the deep pain aching in my stomach—to the shame I sometimes still carry, that I'm broken beyond repair. Unworthy of attention. Destined for lonely bitterness.

I wish I could say I'm fixed now—that I've plugged the dark hole, and now I feel safe with people; that I'm healed completely and living happily ever after. But that wouldn't be true. Even after countless hours of group, individual, and couples therapy, there are still evil tendencies are fucking with me mentally. I still hurt my wife, whom I love the most, and I still struggle asking for help when I need it the most. But the powerful thing that I have learned is that I have control over my interpreter—and I can rewrite it.

This is the story of how I built my self-ware.

This note is part of the first draft of the self-ware project. Email me: "I want to be a beta reader." (or something like that) if you want to hop on the journey and influence the content."