609. Reintroducing Myself Part 1 – Early Life

Due to my extended blogging breaks over the past few years, I figure I should probably do a post of this nature so that the people currently reading have a context and frame of reference for me and what I am writing about. I’m not sure how much detail I will go into on any given section, but I figure once the momentum of writing takes over, I will do what feels right.

I was born in an orphanage in Korea in the late 1970s and given up at birth. Spending the first few months of my life in this environment led to some attachment disorders that would go on to plague me for the rest of my life. When I was around four months old, I was adopted by a Caucasian family in the midwestern United States to a small suburb that was on the edge of rural. The marriage of my adopted parents had basically died and become loveless around two-and-a-half years earlier, yet due to extended waitlists for adoptions, they chose to adopt me since they had been waiting seven years. They had adopted my non-biological sister from Korea when the marriage was still functional and loving, so her relationship with our parents was quite a bit different than mine.

The era I was brought into was one that still carried a great deal of frustration in regard to the Vietnam War, and racism towards Asian males was rampant (while Asian females were fetishized). I suffered a great deal of violence, aggression, harassment, bullying, and exclusion in my early years due to this often to rather extreme levels when you take my age into account. My adopted parents had no idea the severity of it all seeing as my sister didn’t experience similar animosity, save from occasionally having other kids pull the edges of their eyes back to make them look squinty. By contrast, I was getting run down by gangs of older kids on bikes that were carrying weapons getting called every racial slur under the sun while they threatened to kill me.

Having these types of events occurring regularly, with some form of aggressive harassment basically happening every day that I was around “peers,” I found myself mired in depression and suicidal ideation as far back as age four. They started a cycle of self-hatred and fears about being different that would haunt me for the rest of my life.

Another layer of bullying occurred regularly during my childhood that wasn’t racially motivated, although it was exacerbated by the racial bullying since I was already a target. After my sister, my parents realized how quickly kids outgrow things, and in an effort to save money, I was regularly saddled with her hand-me-downs. This mostly included outdoor gear like my bike and ice skates, but also included winter seasonal clothing. This led to a great deal of self-consciousness and a paranoia about what would lead to unwelcome attention.

As I got older, I was forced into playing sports by my adopted father. It was around this time that he began getting physically and emotionally abusive with me. Non-compliance was treated with verbal shaming and if I didn’t reverse course, it would lead to physical violence. He had grown up poor and was constantly reinforcing the idea that I had opportunities that he never had and since I didn’t appreciate those opportunities, I was selfish, spoiled, and ungrateful. Having to play 4-6 organized team sports per year, every year, trapped me in the most toxic of peer groups. Bullying was rampant. When I wanted to quit to get away from it, I was beaten down. This continued adding to the cycle of self-hatred.

I went through periods of being very popular or very unpopular in school. I was skilled and athletic and when I became the best at certain things, my peer group became tolerable because they respected my skill, but that would change. I was short and late to puberty. My body began packing on mass before I got taller, so I looked stocky and chubby. Others began exceeding my physical abilities and height and the respect went away, re-opening the door to bullying. In turn, I became an asshole and after a few years of the bullying getting worse and me becoming an even bigger asshole, I found myself without many friends left. My parents divorced when I was 13, leaving me with my father most of the time, and shortly after I attempted suicide for the first time.

At 15 I suffered a permanent catastrophic injury that ended all sports for me. I finally had a reason to quit that he couldn’t beat out of me. I treated this as a blessing since it freed me from the toxic peer group, but in hindsight I realize I probably would have ended up a professional baseball player if it hadn’t happened. I used this time, isolation, and loneliness to tear myself down and destroy the asshole I had become. I rebuilt myself based upon idealizations of what I felt a good person was. At 16 I started playing guitar in bands, doing drugs, and partying, which led to a surge in popularity that I would thankfully enjoy throughout the rest of high school.

While I was extremely popular, that didn’t lead to romantic success. I was rejected by everyone who I developed feelings for that I got brave enough to share those feelings with. It was clear to me that girls didn’t find me attractive and that my physical appearance was off-putting enough to cancel out all of my strengths as a person. This compounded on my abandonment issues and found that in my teens I was terrified of dying alone and unloved.

By the time high school was done, I had survived four suicide attempts, four recreational drug overdoses, and nine alcohol poisonings (while still graduating valedictorian). At 18 I went 100% sober, which I would maintain for more than a decade.

Through these years of life, I ended up with severe depression, anxiety, PTSD, cPTSD, abandonment issues, phobia level fears, and a number of ulcers. I recently learned that I have been battling OCD since my childhood as well, but I didn’t know it.

I’m going to stop here and break this up into a series of posts or this will likely end up getting way too long to comfortably read.

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