Dark Secrets from My Youth, a Muddy Motorcycle Ride, Half a Missing Lung, Sexually Deviant Nurses, and the Abusive Little Bastard Who Made Me Who I Am — An Essay on Perfectionism, Survival, and the Perverse Pleasure of Never Being Good Enough

I just got home. I rode my motorcycle a few kilometers to deliver something to a friend who lives out of town, and I had to get there along a bad road and through a bit of darkness. Diagnosis? Very fun. Got mud all over my pants, but mission accomplished. Not in the George W. kind of way. Really accomplished. What did I say to my friend when I got there?

“Sorry, it took a while, and maybe everything got a little bit banged up, but here.”

And just after that, I left, barely acknowledging his thanks, kinda annoyed at myself for the mud (I hit a pothole filled with water and, being an idiot, I only know one way of interacting with a throttle, so I was speeding down the dark road). And I got mud all over my good shoes.

And it got me thinking about how much of a gigantic, pulsating asshole I am to myself. Because the reality, the hard reality, is… I would never, ever accept anyone driving to my home at night to deliver something. Under any circumstances. Even if that something could save my life, regrow my missing half-lung, and make me four inches taller in both directions, if you get my drift. Just no. Why? Well:

Do you have this tiny voice, this tiny bastard in the back of your head that constantly tells you, “You could do better”? No? Is it just me? Thought so.

Well, that bastard might be responsible for everything you've achieved while simultaneously preventing you from enjoying any of it. But I'm here to tell you that this exact bastard is probably the best friend you've ever had.

You're probably expecting me to tell you to silence the inner critic and sow a patch of fucking sunflowers, and then we can all get naked, sing Kumbaya, and make sweet, sweet love to everyone present. Sweet, sweaty love. Well, bad news. No. Get a job, hippie. And I mean it.

Do I hold myself to a higher standard than anyone, and I mean anyone, I know? Hell yes. When I apologized for the delay and the imperfect work I'd done, I meant it. I should be perfect by now, and it's an insult to society, science, technology, and evolution itself that I'm not. I have seen all my works, and I know how imperfect they are, and sometimes it physically hurts. Like my sex jokes. I know they are very, very good, but objectively, they could be better… I always seem to miss the balance between shock and fun. Like, a perfect sex joke should slip in effortlessly, painlessly, perfectly.

“But Sisyphus, it doesn't sound like that voice is a very good friend. Even worse, you don't seem like a particularly happy or well-adjusted man, so I won't be taking advice from you,” you say. So let me explain. But first, obviously, a story.

A few weeks ago, a person—yes, that one—let me know that she was in tears because she got a really bad grade on a midterm. Really bad. How bad? She got a 4 out of 5. And even worse, some dumb sod whom she despises as an evolutionary dead end got a higher grade. I don't know exactly when I started loving her, but that day definitely was in the mix. Because I got it. I get it. I feel it.

She doesn't need a higher grade. She's about done with college, so there's no scholarship, no practical advantage to a perfect grade in a class she's already passing. Nothing. Nada. Zero. Zilch. And still, she cried. And I love her for it. I recognize her talent, and I will always sing her praises because, during most of the great moments of my life—and thankfully, I've had a few—I've had a knot in my throat and an urge to cry. Whatever I was celebrating was probably good enough for everyone else, but definitely wasn't for me.

But why, why do I think this killjoy asshole, who devalues everything I do and is never satisfied, is my best friend? Where does this drive to not only excel but exceed expectations come from?

Well, in my case, it comes from the realization, the clarity, that I have no right to my life, to any of my achievements, to any of my stories, good or bad. I'm, by any credible measure, living a life meant for another. And knowing that, knowing what I know about myself, I know that every achievement, every good thing I've done, is not enough. Not just because I can do better, but because humanity, the world we live in and the one we will leave behind after we die, deserves it. And if my contribution to humanity's progress is going to be some reflections, some code, and some mediocre sex jokes, then by golly, I'll make the most of everything, and I'll leave my soul, my blood, and every square inch of skin I have in the effort.

I should have been dead at least a dozen times over. The first time was before I was even born:

There should be two of us, you know? I've come to call my dead twin Autolycus, and when my twin was miscarried, I, very much out of character, clung to life, and my brave mother spent four months on bed rest to ensure I wasn't gonna go the way of the dodo. Thanks, Mom. Really, very thoughtful of you.

But that wasn't the last time. There was a poisoning at eighteen months, then a close call with a window, then anemia of several interesting varieties, allergies, and what my doctors and I concluded was the congenital defect in my lung, which would eventually cost me half of it, acting up like an angry teen.

I spent my first fifteen years on this planet as a sickly, severely disabled kid who had a lot of trouble socializing and, in all honesty, had very little going for him in practically every aspect of his life. Except that he was somewhat smart and, above all, a born fighter. And in loneliness, just him and his inner critic, he learned a lot of stuff that the crappy educational system of his country would never have touched, giving him an education worthy of a prince. Science, languages, the classics, history, philosophy, religion, warfare, art. There was some method to his furious studying, and the inner critic, the self-demanding prick, prevented the kid from slipping into a comfortable routine of reading Jules Verne and sleeping in. The inner critic wanted a polymath, and what the inner critic wants, he gets, right?

But why? Why is this horrible person, this enemy within, so absolutely important, you ask?

Because the critic was everything that stood between me and a defeat so complete that there would have been nothing left afterward. He was aware of all my disadvantages, and he kept score. Exercise, reading, thinking, biographies, and the Greek classics gave the eternal loner insight into the human soul and such alien concepts as love, friendship, good and evil, and the sometimes strange motivations that move us all.

The critic—that voice of evolution, that inner need to go down fighting and never admit defeat, even when doctors, family, and everyone else in the world would not only forgive me for surrendering but set the example by giving up on me from the get-go—made sure I never considered giving up for even a second. And the extraordinary part is that no one, not even him, could have known what we would have been giving up. What we would have lost if we'd simply lain down to die in peace, in silence, in autistic bliss. Now I know what we would have lost, and I'm thankful because I've had an interesting, extraordinary life.

By the time the world came knocking, it came in the shape of a now-departed, much-lamented, much-loved old man who one day decided to quiz the weird, silent kid and gave him the confidence to start speaking his languages aloud to people other than himself.

There's a saying that fits rather nicely here: “In the fields of observation, chance favors only the prepared mind.” — Louis Pasteur.

I made my bet, rolled the dice, and… won. The prize? A full life. Living by myself, paying my bills. Living in absolute freedom. Driving. Traveling. Making bad choices. Entertaining bad company. Having a lot of fun.

And then, obviously, the bomb in my chest blew, and I was in for another big fight. And in my corner? Mr. Defeat-Is-Not-Even-an-Option. Fuck me? No. Fuck you, half-lung.

You're lying on the floor, choking after trying to run? You're getting up, you hear me, you bastard? You're damn well getting up, and you're fighting until you win or until we're dead, because we're not going to a group home to have a lovely nurse wiping spit from our chin. If there are lovely nurses in our future, we'll be the ones doing the whipping, as usual!

When push came to shove, the critic turned into a deranged drill sergeant who had me walking around on post-op day two and was planning on getting back to diving and maybe climbing Everest by day five. And I was all for it. I traded my laptop and my books for brass knuckles and got into my martial artist persona, taking the punches, waiting for my moment, and handling the pain with grim determination. And when the situation turned grim, the pain became chronic, and the fatal words were uttered: “Maximum medical improvement (MMI) reached. The recovery window has closed.” He was there, maybe a little teary-eyed, but muttering:

“Like hell it has. We'll show them. We'll show them all.”

And he was there, through every fall, through every blackout, through every exhausting training session that left me wishing for the sweet release of death. Through it all, the asshole, the critic, the drill sergeant, me, was there, in my corner. One year later, I walked into my doctor's office on my own two feet, no cane, and he, his coworker, and I hugged and cried a little. The critic was the one crying the most. I think I heard him say, slowly:

“That'll do, pig. That'll do.”

They weren't wrong, by the way. The recovery window was closed, and my limitations will die someday. The problem is that I will die with them. Pain and shortness of breath are part of my reality, but I've found ways to cope better and learned to manage my limits. In time, I was able to walk without assistance, go to the gym, and do many things that had seemed impossible on that first, fateful day, precisely because I learned to understand my limits. Because when I go beyond them, it's lights out and humiliation. And we hate humiliation.

So, is this the healthiest way to deal with yourself? Absolutely fucking no. But what can I say? I've seen one sister go to her grave from a cold, friends die from all kinds of treatable maladies, and still, here I am, enduring, fighting. So, in keeping with all my nihilistic ideas, I keep at it, remembering the words associated with Sirach 7:36: “In everything you do, remember your end.” Because it's not only my own inevitable death. It's everyone's. We owe it to everyone already gone to make the effort to live life to its fullest, to its craziest.

So, you can spend a mint learning how to silence your inner critic, hoping that once he's gone, you'll finally be able to bedrot in peace, free of expectations, free of demands, free of the terrible inconvenience of having to do something with your life. Viktor Frankl be damned. But you'll be missing out. So, instead of silencing that voice, try to embrace it. Not every insult, not every impossible demand, but that relentless refusal to settle for nothing. To me, it's the voice of evolution, the same ancient impulse that drove our ancestors out of the sea and, eventually, onto two feet. In my case, it became a whole “No retreat, no surrender” manifesto after I lost a piece of a very important organ. It took me from the floor to a wheelchair, then a walker, then a cane, and finally to walking on my own.

And if you're needed, if help is needed, get in the saddle and ride. But don't do it looking for credit. Don't do it looking for praise. Do it because we're all in this together, and we should be doing good to each other. And because that'll maybe get the critic to shut the fuck up. At least for a while.

Want a piece of advice? Let's quote another deranged, weird, sick man, the Marquis de Sade:

« Livrez-vous, Eugénie ; abandonnez tous vos sens au plaisir ; qu'il soit le seul dieu de votre existence. »

Or:

“Give yourself up, Eugénie; surrender all your senses to pleasure; let it be the only god of your existence.”

It's exactly what I've done all these years, although I suspect the Marquis and I might disagree about what constitutes a good time. Nothing describes my relationship with my inner critic better, because it's my belief that the best people, the most lovable, the most extraordinary, find pleasure in effort, in exertion, in breaking themselves against the rocks and building themselves up again.

And that's the most important part of this piece: through it all, I've had fun. I've enjoyed myself. I've enjoyed my inner critic very fucking much.

That bastard.