It's been a long process.

My teachers missed a lot of early issues that could have helped me not fall behind on school. They also ignored it if I was being bullied.

Adults didn't encourage me on or work with me on the path I expressed interest in until it was far too late to make a difference.

We moved around constantly and my folks were taken advantage of by employers and landlords both.

My dad died when I was younger and the few guys my mom developed an interest in weren't great people.

I was harassed nightly while doing my paper delivery job for two years by the pigs. Because I found three of them hiding in a parking lot dicking around and had the audacity to drop my newspapers out the window and drive off.

In school I figured out I'm not exactly straight (also not gay, or bi) and was given death threats (may or may not be directly related but it seems likely).

I have a rare genetic defect and was bullied because of the output of it. This also prevented me from getting insurance when I needed it in my early adult years.

The PATRIOT Act was enabled, when I was a young adult and even then (being privacy minded) I knew it was going to start the downfall because you can't kill ideas, and terrorism is an extremist tactic to make your message heard (war is the funded form of terrorism).

I've watched workers rights get stripped away during all of this, and the poor get poorer while the money floods to the drop never to "trickle down."