When I look back at my past, I wonder if I really am a bad person

I've made a lot of mistakes in my life I'm not proud of. I had anger issues since I was a kid. I started off hitting people whenever they pissed me off & that led to getting in fights at school often. When I got older I realized that might've largely been due to my early childhood. I used to watch my parents fight to the point they were screaming at each other, pushing, choking, or hitting each other. I remember being scared at times but I eventually grew accustomed to it. In one memory when I was 4 years old, my parents were choking each other out against the wall & they started yelling at me to look away. I didn't even react, I just looked back at the TV & kept watching my cartoons while they fought next to me. Later that night the cops asked me if I saw what happened & I said yeah. So they asked what I saw & I simply explained it like it was a regular thing (because it was), then asked if he wanted to see my favorite toy. It was a Woody doll from Toy Story. He was my favorite at that age. The next day I woke up & our dad was gone. Mom took me to preschool & told us he was in jail but he'd be home soon. That wasn't the first time either.. There was a few different times that happened. All I knew was that Mom would take me to school whenever Dad was gone.

After our mom left it seems like our dad took his anger out on us instead. His new girlfriend seemed like she hated us. She would tell lies & exaggerate about us so we would constantly be punished.. mostly me & my sister. I even learned to stop crying from physical pain simply because I didn't want to show I was hurt. I could tell that made me get it worse but I still refused to cry. I haven't cried from any physical pain since that age actually. I'm not able to.

I'm not trying to make excuses for my bad decisions growing up, I'm just saying I can understand where my anger might've stemmed from. I went from always getting beat by my dad as a kid, to him later on being afraid to confront me because HE didn't want to fight with ME. I was normally a calm & funny guy it's not like I walked around mad or anything. It's just when someone provoked me, I became a different person. I just snapped. My childhood taught me to fight even though I was afraid & I did that for most of my life.

I don't feel like I'm a bad person now. I'm not angry like I used to be but it's like I'm always discovering something new that I've been wrong about & never realized it before. When I look back on some decisions in the past with newer insight... I can see how selfish I've been. How angry. Vengeful. Stupid. Reckless. Even just downright cringey like did I think it was cool to be an idiot or something? Even though I typically choose to be honest, I definitely don't feel proud of my dumber decisions. I laugh things off most the time because it's my way of coping but I promise I don't just take things lightly.

It's weird because I feel blessed but I wonder why I even deserve it. I feel like I'm still working so hard to simply deserve the good things in my life. I don't know if that makes sense. I used to never feel like I deserved anything so maybe it's just an extension of that feeling. Idk.
All I know is that when someone tells me I'm a good person.. I wonder if they'd still think that if they saw my whole life. Because I haven't always been a good person. Sometimes I still catch myself thinking selfishly but I do my best to re-evaluate when I realize it. It's like I'm always teaching myself to un-learn little pieces of bad behavior or attitudes that I never realized I had.

SatanBurger · 36-40, F

You're allowed to make mistakes and allowed to change, environmental noise is real. How are you supposed to be "grounded" when you have too much noise in an environment from your parents fighting and the things you went through. Kind of sounds like you just shut down for awhile and probably what made you survive all that in the first place.

But it also sounds like even though the old you is apart of you, you also changed too because you realize you deserved better and got away from all the noise in which you were able to think.

You're a changed person now, or at least aware of your actions than from before.

I hesitate to say this as I'm not you so this isn't me trying to put words in your mouth but at the time it probably felt like sleep walking I can imagine. You probably remember some stuff but maybe it was more like you were asleep? That's how I was in the past at least when I was going through stuff.

Anyways, we all do stuff sometimes, that's my point.. just that people don't talk about it that's all, makes one feel alone but you're not alone. Society also has unrealistic standards in which they don't allow people to change but people do change.

I just think you were too young to be able to deal with all those emotions and sounded like you just shut down for awhile, it's your brains way of making you survive.

There's no such thing as a perfectly good person. I just think we all just go off of the information we have at the time but you're very self aware and you have that going for you so don't be so hard on yourself either.

🤗

ChiefJustWalks · 26-30

@SatanBurger I'd say I was never really that good with emotions even when I was aware of them. Even now I'm still learning. I just hate feeling like I'm blaming it on anything. You're right though I don't think there's any such thing as a perfectly good person. & Thank you by the way. I guess sometimes when I start thinking too much, I can feel pretty stupid about a lot of things