When were you the asshole?

Waited all week to answer this question. Sit back and grab a cold one, because this won't be short.

This is a theme that hits very close to home. I have been the asshole on many, many occasions without even knowing it, and cognizance of that element of my personality is one of the cornerstones of my adulthood. I've molded my "man" persona in part on recognizing and controlling my tendency to be abrasive and disrespectful, while focusing my energy on being firm and strong instead. My youth was a particularly bad period for me, culminating in a string of out-of-control, reckless, and ultimately consequential events.

A few cases:

• In college I pledged a fraternity, and it was the first time in my life I got that much attention. I was voted president of my pledge class as I made a great first impression with everyone, but as time went on I felt that people were exasperated with me, and it came out from them on more than one occasion. I would demean people and openly go behind their backs knowing that there was little retribution I'd have to face.

• I attended virtually no classes and did no homework in college. I showed up for midterms and finals and when I got shitty grades, I had the nerve to go complain to the professors

• Road rage and general disrespect for people I was unlikely to ever see again were common traits of my young self

• Disrespect toward women was the norm for me. I respected no physical or personal boundaries. Everything was within scope for me so long as I wouldn't be viewed too badly for it

• I spent my time and money racing cars. I didn't even have a really hooked up ride, I just needed the thrill. I would attend nighttime events and have been apprehended my law enforcement more than once, luckily never warranting a felony or serious charge. But I was involved in multiple accidents, and I regularly endangered mine and friends' lives in the pursuit of momentary entertainment

• I killed a baby bird. This was a particularly dark and chilling event in my life. It was afraid, and almost as a judgment of its fear, I killed it in a very painful way. I could not stop thinking of that event for years, and if there is any single point in time I can say that struck me to my core and made me wonder "what is wrong with me?", then this is it.

What changed me was a reckoning that began when I was 22. I was in a foreign country doing an internship that I scored through sheer force of will (tons of search, hiring a recruiter to help with what little cash I had, learning a foreign language to be good enough to be useful). While in said foreign country, I was notified that I'd flunked out of school. I performed terribly at my internship, it being my first exposure to business since I was previously chasing an IT career, and I left with little to show for myself other than an epic story of debauchery at the club and with the local women. When I got back later that summer, a close friend, a girl, decided she'd had enough of me and cut me out of her life entirely. I stopped attending fraternity events and despite what I'd hoped, all but the closest of my friends preferred to let me disappear rather than to try finding out what happened to me.

Having finally run out of money from a business I started when I was 18 and from random jobs I had in college, I left school and returned to my parents apartment. I sought to escape that place for reasons that can best be summed up as "my parents are insane." But I had no choice: as a poor minority from a third-world country and with no connections, no brand-name college, and only 1 business internship under my belt, my options were to buckle down for an epic struggle or to forget about "making it" in a field like finance altogether.

For 2 further years, I dealt with the mental and emotional fallout of recognizing that I suffered from mental health issues passed down from my parents' own struggles (another long story), and that if I were ever to become a better man and make it up to the people I let down, and if I were ever to succeed professionally, I needed to do some hard work on myself.

For 2 years, I went to the gym every day religiously. I was a fat fuck previously, but no more. For 2 years, I studied every day and took online classes to finish my degree. I put my language skills to use and worked as a translator for a small company downtown and used the cash I earned to fund my classes, and worked as a part-time intern for a brokerage in midtown. At 23 years old I was doing what I should have been doing at 19, but it needed to be done. All of it was necessary to get over the things that were poisoning my personality: laziness, an inability to see past myself, an unwillingness to recognize anyone else's struggle, the belief that I had earned something when in truth I had earned nothing, along with all the character flaws one would expect of a man in his youth.

And I reflected a lot; I spoke with virtually nobody in that time. I turned almost into a mute, and today still I speak little and I know that people notice it, but I have little to say. My life has become about listening to people rather than saying anything I may think, for I know it is of little importance. I come here to WSO and troll people sometimes, but when someone asks a question like this, I tell you the answer. Some things need to be talked about, and I hope that someone who reads this, if anyone, can take solace in the fact that a soul potentially more fucked up than they was able to change for the better.

Today, I believe that I am better but know that there is much work left to be done. I see other people and see the positive elements of them before anything else, and I try to help people wherever I can. Being positive and wanting to work and to be better have gone very far for me, and I am in awe every day of the people I've managed to surround myself with after being such a negative influence on others in my youth.

Every day I walk home from work - from the trading desk at a top BB - and I treasure every step of that walk. At 20 I set out to "get into investment banking" at the behest of that friend I no longer have. Along the way I transformed myself, and now almost at 30 years old I'm well into the job and am a different person. I see those years as if they were yesterday, and I hope to always be able to recognize when I am not a kind person, and I hope to be able to help others struggling with themselves the way I once did.