My upbringing was more traumatic than usual for white, affluent, cisgender male children. The trauma and its effects spurred me to make sense of Life, which contributed to my love of biology. The details no longer seem as important as they once did, but in case you’re interested, here are some of my formative experiences:
Difficulties:
- My mother became depressed after my birth.
- When I was 3, she was sexually assaulted, which deepened her depression.
- My parents divorced when I was 4.
- From then until her death, my mother was frequently hospitalized for severe depression and received numerous electoconvulsive treatments (ECT).
- In a cold winter after the divorce, I contracted pneumonia and spent weeks in a hospital, under an oxygen tent.
- When I was 5, my mother moved us to the city where her parents lived, beginning annual relocations that continued until I left home at age 16.
- My mother died of suicide when I was 6.
- My father relocated me and my sister to live with him and the woman he’d married not long after the divorce. Our stepmother disliked children, lacked empathy, and did not want us in her house.
- She abused us in cold, calculated ways. In my case, this included strangulation, food deprivation, and other forms of assault and neglect.
- My sister suffered a psychotic break at age 17. Though I was only 11, it fell to me to try to keep her safe.
- My father, stepmother, and sister used alcohol and other substances addictively.
- After my sister graduated high school when I was 12, my father and stepmother hosted group sex parties in our home.
- My stepmother sexualized her abuse of me around the same time.
- I was a shy, anxious kid with ADHD and prosopagnosia. Friendships never came easily to me, so I tended to isolate.
- Because of the difficulties above—and the fact my stepmother banned me from her house on school day afternoons—I spent much of my boyhood alone.
- By age 14, I was smoking pot daily while drinking and using other drugs several times a week.
- In high school, I acted out. I was a frequent visitor to the principal’s office and was arrested four times.
Advantages:
- The privileges afforded by my race, gender, and socioeconomic class.
- Proximity to nature.
- High quality schools.
- A father who modeled good intellectual habits.
- Lots of freedom and autonomy.
- Exposure to diverse viewpoints, lifestyles, and ethnicities.
- Witnessing familial substance abuse, which later helped me recognize and address my own addictions.