Where to begin? At the beginning, I guess.
I was born in Atlanta at Crawford W. Long Hospital, right on Peachtree Street. My family was from Albany, Ga. My mother was born in Brunswick, Ga., and my dad in Macon, Ga. I’m an only child, and my mother passed away from leukemia in 1983.
I spent my vacation time travelling around. I spent about 10 summers in Wolfeboro, NH on Lake Winnepesaukee. I went to Camp Belknap, which is a great camp.
My grandfather, who really raised me after my mom died, lived in Ft. Lauderdale, so I went to Florida very often. He had places in Alligator Point(a house he built on 2 beachfront lots in the 1950s) and Marathon, which was helpful when I got to college. I took friends to the Keys for Spring Break often.
We had a beach hous ein Holden Beach, NC too. When I think about how my mom swung buying a beach house, on the beach at her age(early 30s), it’s impressive. Living thriftily pays off, I promise. She was a special agent for the IRS until she got sick.
I attended James F. Byrnes Academy in Quinby, SC, until high school, when I went off to a boys’ boarding school in Virginia. I didn’t realize it at the time, but that was my moving out of the house for good, pretty much. I returned for vacations periodically, but my days at “home” were over, in retrospect. Which was a good thing. Incidentally, Byrnes Academy is no more. The board ecided to make it all black during BM and the Obama years, and that’s what they did. Torched anything to do with James F. Byrnes. (He was a governor, author, scholar, and famous SC stateman.) Trophies, photos, any memories: gone. No focus on academia anymore, just “hope” and graduating, as their new lighted sign says.
I graduated from Woodberry and went to Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, for my freshman year. I transferred back to USC in Columbia, SC where I was a Kappa Alpha and worked for a law firm among other fun. Ironically, I got into USC and UGa when I applied my senior year, but chose Rollins. And then ended up at USC anyway.
I majored in English and minored in Business Administration. I had enough hours to nearly get a degree in Psychology, but (as opposed to English) that was “go-nowhere” major. That was before the internet so I could either be a poet, lawyer or teacher. The internet has vilified my major, thankfully.
I had no help during college or thereafter, and only got bad advice from family. I should sue my academic adviser. (He allowed me to take a graduate-level linguistics class, which had nothing to do with English, and I got out quick, but really? I sat in that class wondering what on Earth they were even discussing, after I had bought books and everything.)
I made the mistake of asking people who had never had a job how to find a good job. But that’s all I had, so…I moved ot Charleston, SC and worked for an insurance company for several years.
That was an interesting “first” job. It was brutal because all I did was get yelled at and cussed at all day. When I got to work, I dreaded checking my voicemail, which was always full, because it was nothing but angry people. It was a reinsurance facility in SC(we don’t have them anymore, luckily) that subsidized the worst drivers in the state. Welfare for terrible drivers, basically, and we had a TON of them. So our insureds were always causing problems and were the bottom of the barrel on the road, at least.
But I learned the industry, which was eye-opening, and how to negotiate, especially with lawyers. I had to deal with chiropractors and ambulance chasers non-stop. A lot of the same lawyers. Who were located in the same strip mall as the chiropractor, not coincidentally. They scratch each others’ backs.
I moved back to Atlanta, the motherland, and was a financial editor for PR Newswire there for several years. Atlanta was a blast.
I eventually moved back to Beaufort, SC, then Bluffton, SC, where I bought a house and got married for about 12 minutes. During this time, I stopped drinking, which is a problem in my family, so I was happy about that. I haven’t had a drop since then, about 20 years ago now. And I am 100% happier, healthier, wealthier, and wiser.
I owned a Jersey Mike’s Subs fanchise in Bluffton, SC I had worked on since before it was even built, and suddenly found myself liberated. I sold the business and decided after much thought, to move to Asheville, NC. I also bought a bright red Porsche. All the stereotypical things. I put the house in Bluffton on the market, which was smack-dab in the middle of the worst housing crisis ever. I managed to sell it in 2007 for the same price I bought it for, but not before sinking tens of thousands of dollars into it.
My dad told me soon after I got to Asheville, a place I loved and chose over every other place on Earth(seriously), that if I moved to Alabama, he would. He has refused to move from his chair in the old house since 1983, so I took the opportunity to help get my dad out of Florence. So I packed up everything, which was a LOT, and moved to Montgomery, Alabama. He did not move and lied to me. (The first big one of many.) I mention that as a word of caution: if someone lies to you once, and you forgive them, they’ll do it again, but worse. You’ve just permitted them. This is something that I had to learn repeatedly, the hard way, from several people, including the one I’m about to mention.
When I got to Alabama, I met the girl who would end up being my ex-wife 10 years later. She had enrolled in the PhD program there, and I was in the MBA program, so it worked out well. For her. For a while. She lived at home with her dad who was living with his dad until she moved him up to LOuisville, for reasons I can only imagine. He can;t drive and has stolen our credit cards before and accused me on a bunch of nonsense. He also kicked a dog down some stairs in front of my little daughter so hard it bled. And when I told her mom, she did nothing. And that’s who’s raising her now, along with the stepdaughter who I could help raise, but not my own daughter. Let that sink in.
I worked in the graduate business school in Tuscaloosa until she graduated in 2010. After extensive interviewing, she landed a job in Indiana, so we moved to Louisville, KY, where neither of us had been before. It’s a terrible place. I never wanted to live in Indiana because I thought I would be leaving the South, but I didn’t realize Louisville isn’t the South since I’d never been there, and magazines like Southern Living will do articles on it for some reason. Indiana is MUCH better, in every way. Crime, education, taxes, cost of living, peace, traffic, and on and on.
I was a marketing consultant and got my KY real estate license, and was very active in helping raise my stepdaughter, Megan. We put her in Collegiate, a good private school(eveyone knows how awful JCPS is) and Girl Scouts and church and Cotillion and on and on. Her mother put her in public school took her out of church and never took her to any meetings or dances. And that trend has now continued with our daughter, except they now live in the ghetto.
She’s since lost he tenured job and alienated everyone we knew up there, including the guys(another marketing professor she met who championed her to get her the job) that let us stay with them for weeks and showed us around and were the most hospitable guys I’d ever seen. Suddenly, they were enemies and no explanation was given. That’s been a lifelong trend I’ve noticed. Can’t keep friends. Not just can’t keep them, but converts them to total enemies. Husbands, too. Marriage lis like dating in her family. 10 divorces in just her immediate family, most during our marriage, then threw ours on the heap, then got married again in a matter of months, and he left her too. And that’s another piece of terrible exposure our daughter has now been witness to. Fights, and the guy was a jerk, cussing at me for no reason(he doesnt even know me, and she refused to even let us meet for over 2 years, rightbefor ehe moved back to NJ) with Cecelia in his arms, destroying the house, fighting, etc… My ex told me about the fighting and him moving back, but they’re staying married. Tax purposes is all I can figure. Typical.
So, after wasting 10 prime years of my life with her, I found myself separated, served divorce papers, PLUS her trying to file a restraining order against me, which was part of the ploy to publicly say she wants joint custody, but privately taking our daughter away and hiding under a rock and pretending like she’s not.
The judge tossed that out, but that little stunt cost me $1800. And didn’t work, so she doubled down. And she then filed another a few years later, which was also thrown out. See a pattern here?
But that time, the judge did what they do. If mom and dad aren’t getting along, as her lawyer, she was paying! was telling her, The judge says for each parent to go to their corner, and the children go with their mom. No exception. Lawyers know this, and now I do. I’ve corroborated this with attorneys, sheriff’s deputies, a judge, and other men in similar circumstances. I’m not unique, unfortunately.
So I haven’t seen my daughter in years and her mom refuses to allow her to see, speak or contact anyone in her paternal family, and can only be around people approved by mom. Which is very few, and not pillars of society.