I grew up with a single dad. My parents broke apart sometime when I was like one or two years old.
My dad had alcohol and amphetamine problems (not meth, just normal amphetamine). He went in and out of various delusions and could be in a psychosis for weeks at an end. Like, believing that we were spied upon by the government and so on. One time he came home and was cut up, bleeding like a pig, presumably because he had crossed some gangster. He said it was nazis that had done it to him.
He slept a lot and Never had a job. We never had clean clothes or anything. Sometimes there was no food in the refrigurator.
When I was 8 I contemplated committing suicide, because my life was hell. I was a member at a shooting club and I had noticed that I could steal bullets from the shooting practice. So I had quite far gone plans for that. But I decided that if I just lived through this shit I would grow up and gain control over my own life, and that maybe I could move away from home in not that many years from now.
When I was 12 the police came to my home and took me away. They never told me WHY they did that. As in, what was the official bureaucratic reason? They never told me that. I actually asked them, and they were perplexed and asked me if I didn't understand that. Of course I did, I told them, but I wanted to see the actual document, the decision making process that led up to that. They told me they would show it to me, and then they just never came back to me with that. I still do not know.
I was placed in a childcare home. Locked windows and stuff, but I instantly got like 6 new crazy friends that I absolutely loved. This was in Sweden, and not retarded USA, so we were actually treated with a great deal of respect and loving care at the childcare home. Every weekend something had to happen, like we HAD to go to an amusement park or a zoo or a museum or whatever. After a few months that actually got a bit tedious (!).
But it was actually NICE AS FUCK living at that childcare home.
When I was 14 my mom, which was a total pscyho in the literal meaning, stole a car off a parking lot outside a shopping mall. She drove the car in the opposite *wrong* lane on the high way for a couple of kilometers, and then smashed it into a wall. She instantly broke her neck.
My first thought when my mom died was that, finally, that shit is over. She had only ever been trouble for me, and now I would finally never ever have to deal with her again.
Later that year I was adopted.
I spent the first few years after being adopted living in a little protected bubble that I made for myself in my boy-room. I learned programming and x86 assembler programming. I wrote a couple of viruses and learned to crack software.
When I was maybe 17, I opened up that bubble and got myself some new real friends.
At the university some of the courses, like operating system design and embedded real time systems, I had already learned everything, from back when I was in that bubble.
And now I work as a programmer. I have a quite fucking high salary and everything is just going smooth in my life :)
It's somewhat weird to have NO GUIDANCE whatsoever from my family. All my life choices have been totally my own, with no need to respect or possibility to consult with my dad or mom. In some ways that makes me more free, but also somewhat aimless.