When I was very young, about three, I'd say. I remember a much more comfortable life than the rest of my memories.
I was born in Virginia, the youngest of three. My dad had a Master's degree and worked for the government doing something to do with the department of agriculture. My mom worked at a bank, in a minor capacity. At about this juncture, my father somehow got it in him that we were completely going all in, and moving across the entire country to sunny San Diego, California. I still don't know the exact details why, not sure if either of my parents did either. As far as i can remember, it was all my dad. Which is weird, cause the rest of my life, it was my mom who was in charge. But he had quit drinking after soaking his brain for the majority of the prior 20 years, and decided he'd found a solid opportunity for a career type position in San Diego. And that, before checking up on it, he'd just up and move us all out there.
At some point shortly after this, I remember being on mission beach in san Diego, for what must've been around three plus weeks. I asked my mom, " how long are we gonna be camping for?", as I was told that our adventure on this awesome and amazing place, called the beach, had been dragging on much longer than made sense to my young self...
And this is the first time I truly thought of how we were homeless, as a family.
We would spend the entirety of my youth in cramped and panicked single room hotels. The five of us, two dogs, and occasionally some cats thrown in to boot.
All this, and I'm sure the picture most of you are painting in your minds is one of my youth under alcoholic or drug addicted parents. But no, my parents were as square as a box, and I guess they just sucked at life. I would later always taunt them that they might as well do drugs. Life sucked anyways. And I had come to find it much more palatable under the influence.
Of all this though, I did grow up in an amazing and very kitchy little town within San Diego called Ocean Beach. We were poor as F, but heck with it, we lived half a block from the beach. And from there, I made the best of it....
