What if there is something fundamentally wrong with me? (Key the Metal Idol)

By Homura

Most of our stories have heroes.

Their path is hard, but it is often clear: They start out weak and inexperienced, and by putting in the work and having good mentors and friends in their life, the hero prevails. Their story is a human story.

But what happens if someone believes that there is something fundamentally wrong with them?

It’s not weakness or inexperience, but something that seems to doom them from the start. This is a question which the protagonist of Key the Metal Idol faces.

Key is a robot created by her scientist grandfather, Dr. Mima. After his death, she plays a tape he left behind. Her grandfather says she can become human if she makes 30,000 friends. Key sets off for Tokyo to fulfill that wish. She encounters her childhood friend, Sakura, who takes her in.

People in Tokyo mock the robotic way Key speaks and behaves. Sakura defends her (though not everyone has a Sakura). This is Key’s first encounter with social judgment. The more she’s seen, the more defective she feels.

She might be asking herself:

Why do other people seem to feel things I can’t?

When I imitate what they do, why does it still feel like an empty gesture?

If I can’t feel warmth, does that mean I’m missing something everyone else has?

Is there a part of me that was built wrong — not damaged, but designed incorrectly?

If I do everything right, will the wrongness finally go away?

Would anyone still care about me if they knew what I really am?

If I became perfect — polite, pure, unfeeling — would that make me safe to love?

Why does being human look so easy for everyone else?

Am I pretending to live, or am I actually alive?

Here’s one way of addressing social judgment: Isolating yourself!

If you’re alone, no one is hurting you, and you are not hurting or offending them. Well...

...there is a problem with this: It’s okay to go and be alone to cool down when you’re feeling overwhelmed. If you feel unsafe, then you should do your best to get out of that situation. However, if your answer is always to isolate rather than ask for help, it can be harder to recover. Opening up to someone you trust can help you explore different solutions, perspectives, and ways to process what you’re going through.

It’s also okay to ask for help from anonymous strangers on the Internet. However, if you have no way of contacting one another reliably, that help might not be there when you’re needing it. It might be better to ask for help from people you know and trust, so either of you can reach out whenever. You can do that here with D2L, 988, or a warmline.

Okay, so let’s say you don’t isolate. Like Key, you interact with people in public. Often, you have to be around people, like when you’re at school, work, or with family. You feel exposed and overwhelmed, so to block out the noise and dull your feelings, you channel your robot self.

“My robot self cannot be hurt. I can stay quiet, but I’m not sure a hero will appear to save me. My robot self has power. Why don’t I embrace my robot self and become invulnerable?”

The problem with this:

Even when she doesn’t want it to, Key’s human self comes out anyway. Part of her desperately wants to show her humanity and express her emotions to others. She might try to channel her unaffectable robot self, but she can’t 100% prevent herself from being disappointed, hurt, or depressed. Similarly, she can’t 100% prevent herself from feeling positive emotions. She can’t prevent feeling some small amount of trust, love, and genuine care for people she feels close to. Your human self wants to come out, too. Whether you are feeling hurt...

Or feeling joy and fascination...

Channeling your robot self and dulling your emotions is a way of surviving, but it’s not a way of truly living.

Living with anhedonia (not feeling any pleasure in anything) is miserable. Many people live with anhedonia and describe life as “going through the motions”, much like a robot. However, there are healthy ways to pass through this state and recharge.

You want to find a space where you feel safe and accepted when you express emotions. This can be a physical place, or with certain people. Let’s say you find or create this place. You feel safe, either alone or with someone else, and you want emotions to come out. You want to feel relief and pleasure.

However, you might try to emote, and nothing is coming out. Like Key at the dance audition, you’re ready to do what others do to express themselves. Yet, you can’t seem to move. You feel numb and frustrated and ashamed of yourself.

You might even wonder, am I a robot?

Am I incapable of loving others and loving myself?

Is there something fundamentally wrong with me that I can never correct?

Let’s go one final level deeper and do an experiment. How do we determine if there is something fundamentally wrong with us?

Take a moment to just feel what it’s like to be in your body right now. Notice any sensations in the bottoms of your feet, going up to your ankles, knees... up into your stomach and chest, then up to your jaw and the top of your head. Just bring awareness to your body, as you are right now.

Your thoughts might wander to something that happened in the past or might happen in the future. It might be a thought of something that happened a long time ago, or just a few seconds ago. Let those thoughts float away and return to your present awareness.

Now, determine if there's anything wrong with you, as you are, in this moment. Don't look for evidence in what you’ve done before or what you feel pressure to do in the future. Test with only the evidence that is right here, right now. In this moment, what is wrong with you?

You might feel discomfort, but does that mean there's something wrong with you? In this nanosecond, the only time that can exist, is there anything at all wrong with you?

If you feel like a robot, here are some final questions to ask yourself:

What if nothing was ever missing — only hidden?

What if shame is not proof of wrongness, but proof that I care?

What if the thing I called “wrong” was just the part of me that could feel?

If I am flawed and can still love myself, what does that mean about being human?

If I stop trying to be perfect, who do I become?


If you ever feel overwhelmed or less than human, go get somewhere safe, and then try bringing your awareness back to the present moment. Assess the you of here and now, not of the past or the future.

If you want someone to guide you through this process, check out Joe Hudson on YouTube (the above experiment is timestamped). This isn’t a plug, he has just helped me a lot, as a robot myself.