I was born into an impoverished extremist right wing family. I enlisted in the military back when DADT was a thing. I was disowned as an LGBT teenager, and medboarded out of the military after being committed to inpatient facilities multiple times. After that, i was homeless for a couple years, living out of a car and then a backpack.
I finally ended up in this little town in Georgia, got a job at a little retail store, and moved into a trailer with one of my coworkers. Her friends kind of adopted me and i felt accepted for the first time in my life. We were all broke kids, but i told them i was going to be a millionaire by age 30. I was still pretty emotionally unstable and eventually moved on from that friend group, but it gave me the hope i needed to rebuild my life.
I slowly built a career for myself after that, working 70-80 hours a week for a couple years, until i had my foot in the door. It got a lot easier after that. I didn't quite hit my goal by age 30, but I'm close. I founded my first company at age 28, and raised a 10 million series A. My company is now worth 60 million on paper, but of course that's meaningless until we IPO. But it's profitable, and in the meantime, I've adopted a little family of people like me, and built a comfortable life for us. Life is good, and I'm content.
No, they refuse to speak to me to this day. My gf's family called her to wish her a happy birthday last week, and i cried quietly wishing mine did that too.
I feel like I need to do more than just post a picture. In this case, the picture really does tell the story in a lot of ways, but still, there was a lot of pain and trauma that led me to this point.
I started off depressed and angry, lost in life, knowing what I needed to do, but feeling like it wasn't something I could do. And when I finally accepted that I could do it, years went in to it. A quick photo makes it look like a magical transformation, but there was close to 10 years between those photos, and a lot of self discovery, self exploration and pain. As well as joy, and surprises.
Hey, I just want to say thanks for posting this. I'm just a random internet stranger, but I'm happy for you. I think Fred Rogers sums it up best, he is the epitome of kindness to me.