Entry 004 - The long and winding road

June 1st 2026

To understand who I am, I feel it's necessary to understand where I come from.
I mean this both geographically as well as metaphorically.

I was born in Lexington Kentucky to a mother from Northern Ohio and a father
from Eastern Kentucky. It was very rare for me to meet another person who was
from Lexington like I was. Almost everyone I met was from some part east of
where they ended up.

Nothing makes me feel more like an outsider than when someone tells me about a
place that I'm not familiar with. I liken it to the whole "oh man, you should
have been there" line that comes up when someone tells a joke or a story about
something that I just don't really get. It's that feeling of missing out.

Most of my extended family were nowhere near us and being poor meant we didn't
get a chance to see relatives very often. Christmas and Thanksgiving visits
were awkward since most people were strangers to me.

I've always had trouble making and keeping friends. It's only now in my 40s
that I've come to learn why I tend to have some of the issues I do. My kid was
diagnosed with ADHD and on the autism spectrum this year but we've known about
the ADHD for a long time. In all my research to try and help them out, I
started noticing a lot of the same issues they deal with are the same that I
do. There are too many to go into here, but let's just say it helps explain a
lot of why I've always felt like an outsider.

All that to say that when I got the opportunity to move to San Diego CA in my
late 20s, I jumped at the chance. It was more complicated than that, and I did
miss the friends I had to leave behind, but I wouldn't change it for the world.

I had just gotten married and we had fallen on hard times and had to move in
with her parents. Soon after she was pregnant and almost at the exact same time
they had decided to move to SD. We didn't feel like we had anything truly to
tie us down here so we went with them.

It took years for that to work out to be a good decision and oh do I have
stories to tell about that, but not today. I'm glad we stuck it out and made it
work because I had never felt more at home. I found the people to be more
genuine and accepting, the food amazing, and the weather was just always great.

I had some pretty good work experiences as well as some pretty bad ones. The
schools were good for my kid and I really feel like they were better off in so
many ways compared to what I had experienced. There was so much to do and even
good friends to play D&D with. I felt like I had found a place where people
understood me and I fit in for the first time in my life.

Unfortunately, that all came to an end and when Covid hit we had some more
tough times and had to move to Phoenix Arizona. To say that was one of the
darkest times in my life is putting it lightly. I'll go into more detail at a
later point, this is already getting pretty long.

After 4 years of hell, you know, from the heat... I got a call from my sister
that our dad was in the hospital and that I had to come home. It started with
the expectation that the brain tumor would finish him off but lucky for him it
only paralyzed half his body. His days of living alone were over and the
house we grew up in looks like something out of an episode of hoarders. We
decided that my sister would take him in and care for him till I could move
back and take over.

That day I started making arrangements and looking for a house to rent. Lucky
for me, I was already working remotely so it just meant a time zone change for
me.

It's still a work in progress but it's coming up on 2 years soon since my dad
got sick and we still haven't cleaned out his house yet. Old friends are either
gone or it's been so long that I don't know how to reach out to them anymore.
My marriage was never perfect, but it all fell apart as soon as we got back.
I've been dealing with a divorce, work, caring for my dad, raising a 17 year
old neurodivergent trans kid, and somehow managing to fit in some time for a
new girlfriend. It's been almost 20 years but I still find myself feeling like
an outsider in the town I grew up in.

Overwhelmed is an understatement.