Many of the psychological issues can be overcome by not giving a flying fuck about what others think about you. My father died when I was 17 years old and my b

Many of the psychological issues can be overcome by not giving a flying fuck about what others think about you. My father died when I was 17 years old and my brother was 18 years old. My mother became an alcoholic and for the next 5 or 6 years I saw her sober less than 10 times. There were days in a row when we didn't had what to eat. She prioritized alcohol, cigarettes and coffee over food. We were so poor that my brother got ill of tuberculosis from the lack of food. I was luckier because I used to eat at my ex girlfriend (present wife). The clothes I got were usually gifts received from my girlfriend. I was wearing the same pants months in a row, daily, until they got holes in them. But I don't remember being stressed about what others thought about me and that made my whole adolescence beautiful. I wasn't even aware that somebody would notice that I wore the same clothes every day. Until one day a girl in my high school told me "these are some nice pants that you have, too bad that you're wearing only those". It hurt me, but I got over it fast thinking "how does this concerns you anyway?" and kept wearing them, because I didn't had others. And my main teacher once told me "you look good wearing other colors than black". While the black shirts were the only ones I got, until I received that light colored one. And I took that as a compliment - she just told me that I was looking good after all. The positive part of being extremely poor for about 7 years is that I got really fed up with poorness and I do my best to never going back. Fast forward 15 years after finishing high school, I am a software developer with 11 years experience, working remotely for a US company and I think my earnings put me somewhere in the top 1% earners in Romania. Since I started to work for this company, I didn't took a single vacation (with a few exceptions of 1-2 days off), because I feel it's the opportunity of my life time and I want to make as much as possible out of it. While I got 9-to-5 jobs I always tried to learn new things and had side projects and I was somehow baffled why the majority of my programmer colleagues weren't interested in something similar. So, there are positive things in anything if we really try to find them. And a positive attitude makes the difference between feeling miserable and feeling ... normal, or even being happy. I think that my years of poorness increased my motivation and desire to succeed in life drastically, but it's definitely not an experience I would encourage someone to try.