"A Brutally Beautiful Mind", Shervin Emami.
Summary:
I was born in Iran during both a war & a revolution, to a Mum that was so heavily traumatised that she couldn’t give me the nurture & protection I needed. Soon after, I burnt nearly to death in a fire. Narrowly escaping death gifted me an incredibly deep gratitude to be alive, by age 1. Iran being a collectivist society, my extended family gave me enough to be happy during the war. But I lost this at 4 when we moved to Australia where I lacked nurture & protection.
My life quickly became brutally tough around age 5: I realised I’m not like other kids (due to Autism and Complex PTSD), my best friend was taken away, my Dad left, leaving me to keep my chaotic Mum from falling apart, I stripped in a paedophile club, and I was gang raped by a group of men, all within 1 year! My Persian people were still in war & poverty, so I felt I couldn’t complain, I accepted absolutely anything life threw at me. At 5 & 6 I spent most of my time analysing my past experiences to consciously build my internal model of people & societies, that I used for survival every day. I desperately needed nurture & protection, I tried getting it from classmates but it didn't work, I always felt alone and permanently in danger. I couldn’t trust my parents or any adults or classmates, only my little Brother & Sister. So I made sure I could have absolute trust in myself at all times, relying purely on my intelligence to keep us safe, never allowing myself to relax or lose control of my mind or emotions even once. This became crucial a year later when I was 7: my 45 year old babysitter kidnapped me & my little Brother. She didn’t know that by 7 I was an Autistic genius with monk-level self-control. I out-smarted her & saved us just before she smuggled us overseas! Without much adult supervision for the next 5 years, I was briefly in an orphanage by age 8, regularly fighting and in a gang by 11. I hated humanity, but saw enough beauty in Mother Nature and raw existence to keep surviving.
By 13 I became dangerously close to being a serial murderer in order to get brutal revenge on humanity. I managed to deeply suppress my desire for revenge, but 6 months later my suppressed emotions & loneliness reached too much to endure another year. I needed a very powerful escape. I didn't know I was autistic but I understood certain aspects of my brain very well. So as my very last resort before heroin or suicide, I tried a radically unusual addiction: focusing my mind so hard on inventing gadgets, that all darkness temporarily disappeared. It genuinely worked, I managed to survive week after week. It became my path to inner happiness, and I accidentally developed world-class skills along the way! At 17 I was almost mute, rarely able to speak more than a few words per day, but I was in a hardcore punk bank, had some friends, had invented & built many gadgets, obsessed with robots & AI conciousness, and had written some of the fastest 3D software in the world.
I eventually became a world-class expert in Robotics & AI, even offered to work on NASA’s 1st robot to step foot on planet Mars! Then I backpacked 35 countries with my baby, raising her to be far more joyful & light-hearted than I ever was, marking an end to generations of trauma! By late 30s my suppressed emotions became problematic again after my divorce, so I finally dug deep into my emotions & traumas, unlocking many positive outcomes.