My story starts in a place called Nelsonville, Ohio. It's a small community in the foothills of Appalachia, nestled in the Wayne National Forest. My parents were never married. My mom gave birth to me when she was 16. I was their only child, but they've each had other children with their other partners since. My mom had two more boys with a man that is now dead. My dad had a girl a little older than me, two more boys, and a girl younger than me. They're both married respectively now, and I've got a handful of step-siblings, too.
My family has never had much money. My mom and step dad work at Sonic Drive In; my dad works at Wendy's.
During 6th grade, I moved into my dad's house in Shade, Ohio. It's not even a town, but rather a township, out in the middle of the country. Needless to say, I grew up pretty sheltered. I occupied my time by reading and listening to music when I wasn't watching my siblings or helping take care of the animals - we had cats, dogs, horses, goats, and chickens.
I was also pretty into computers. My dad got me interested in programming when I was still in middle school. I taught myself HTML in high school, went to Tri-County Career Center for their Computer Tech Academy program my junior and senior years, participating in SkillsUSA's web design competition at the state level both years. After high school, I decided to move back to Nelsonville to attend Hocking College for e-business and web design.
The only problem was that I was starting to become disillusioned with the matrix I was leading myself into. I had experimented with LSD at the ages of 13 and 14 on a regular basis, thanks to a friend I had back then. At 15, I attended my first festival - Cornstalk at Wisteria. At 16, I was volunteering for Wisteria's events. The more I got to experience the woods, the less I wanted to do with technology. Shortly after leaving high school, psychedelics became available to me again and made me question the direction I was leading my life even more - listening to the metallic drone of voices coming through a speaker in the classroom.
I was also letting a homeless friend of mine from high school stay with me, starting to worry more about getting high than class, and spending too much money on drugs. We've all been there, right? Well, it ended with me just not going to class anymore.
I lost my apartment shortly after that and moved in with some friends for about a month, then moved back in with my uncle, where I stayed until I got a job counting inventory.
I moved back in with my mom when I got the job, but the work the job provided was seasonal. It wasn't long before the off-season hit, leaving me without work for over a month. In that time, my step-dad said that my mom and him could no longer support me because they had to also support my brothers.
I packed my tent, sleeping bag, and some other essentials in a quite uncomfortable backpack and hit the road. This was in late October of 2013.
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