I hope I can help you with my reply, it might be long, but that's for a reason. I will start from the beggining:

My childhood was very troublesome. Full of problems at home, my mother has always been abusive, hitting me hard for every single mistake I made, my parents used to fight a lot and things easily went out of control. I had no one to talk, no one to seek help. So with time, all the anger, deep sadness, frustration I've got, started to eat me from the inside. So I began to be very violent, I beat people on the streets, at my school, I bullied other kids and so on. Violence was the only way I had to express everything I had inside me. I tried to start learning Karate (my father was a Karate student in his youth) by reading and trying to copy my fathers books. I started TKD at 11yo but my father said it was going to be a weapon on my hands, that I should never learn how to hurt people because I was willing to do it. So he prohibited me from learning martial arts, but I had secretly stolen one single karate book: be your own master. I read it, trained it, but I was still violent. I wasn't aware that my violent behavior was toxic and harmful. My father helped me a lot, despite my mother beating me, he helped me with great conversations and with his own exemple of one concerned, despite all the crap around him, to seek peace and being a peaceful person. And when I was 14, 15, I was trying to control my inner demons, focusing my rage on the love I was developing for martial arts, watching the movies, reading the quotes, copying the movements and so on. I was talented, courageous, strong, and I was getting my shit together, until the day I saw a man being murdered by 5 guys, who just kept beating him until he died in front of me and other people. That scene haunted me for years, and I'd throw up if I'd seen any kind of violence demonstration. My love for martial arts was once again forbiden for me. So this emptiness, this void began to grow in my heart. Many events led me to sadness and frustration. Anger was not even a thing anymore. A deep depression took my mind away from me and I saw myself abandoning everything and everyone I loved for only the chance of being free from that pain I felt. I was living in another city, away from my parents and my beloved brother, when I meditated about my whole life for months. I came to the conclusion that I was responsible for every single event in my life, and also some bad events in other peoples lives aswell. So I remembered my youth, how good I was at fighting, and I imediatly went to a Gracie Barra to train boxe (I had already previous experience with boxe, trained with the Nogueira brothers and with the brazilian olympic team in Manaus). I was very good and I wanted to be a pro, I wanted to make money to get my family back together and redeem myself from my faults. But again the tides had changed, and my very mother asked me to go back to my hometown to look after for my brother. I did that, and he, my little brother, introduced me to TKD, after a decade away from it. I was still with that hole inside me, that would drag anything good in my thoughts and deform it. I still remember the first day I made my vows, it changed my life. I competed in many tournaments, here we don't care about protection, so I left my fights hurt and had to stay weeks away from the dojang. I realized when I was training, I wouldn't feel sad, or angry, or anything, I'd just let go. Many things started to make sense, words started to be heavier, I listened to what great martial arts had to say and I followed them. Be water, I said to myself, and I left competition to practice every day, with no interruptions. I still feel the desire to compete, to test myself against other opponents, to overcome the fear of getting hit, but I forget it in the very second I start my warm up. Everything related to martial arts I've learned is what made me who I am today, and is what makes me keep going. Sometimes I wake up in the morning asking myself "why?, why should I wake up?" and the answer comes with my daily training.