Who’s Hank

I’m Hank, I was born in the late 70s in a small hospital in east Texas, the second and final child of my mother and father. They were both workers, my dad in the industrial electronics field and my mother worked retail. They lived on a plot of land with my father’s parents at the time.

I had a pretty regular childhood, nothing super traumatic as many experience. I was raised primarily by my grandmother, my grandfather passed before I remember him. My mother and father were both as present as they could be with the demands of their jobs/lives.

My mother was foreign born, coming originally from eastern Europe. She had a hardness about her, not an anger, but a distance I guess is what I would refer to it as. It felt as if she was there, but more as a surrogate than an actual mother. Mom’s are supposed to be the love of the house, and that was lacking. She wasn’t mean, she didn’t ignore me, but there wasn’t much of a connection between us. Her first love was her job, and it took priority over everything.

My father was a Texas native who was ex military. He had a hardness and an anger about him. He wasn’t physically abusive, I received my fair share of whoopings, but nothing out of the ordinary for the time. His special flavor of torture was mental, breaking me like boot camp, but getting a lifetime to keep honing it. He had a temper, but it was usually taken out on whatever he was working on at the time, or whatever happened to be in reach when it flared up.

My grandmother was the source of the “love” I was granted in my childhood and teen years. The one member of my family that I truly had a connection with, who I truly felt cared for me, and who put in the most work with me and my sibling. She was from north Texas headed up Oklahoma way originally. She married my Grandpa before he shipped off to WW2. My grandpa was alive when I was born, but passed away before I had any memories of him. My granny had a lot going on, she battled cancers (breast, lung, skin, female) and had a pretty rough life. She was that typical granny you’d see in some classic movie. She canned, cooked from scratch, gardened, sewed, crocheted, knit, pretty much everything.

My grandfather, I didn’t know. I know from my grandmother and from my parents that he, like my dad, had a temper on him and liked to partake in mental warfare himself. Folks on the outside loved him, but people on the inside feared him, well they feared his temper.

My sibling, sister, was older than me by a couple years. We never really were into many things the same. So if we played together it was short lived. We were close when we were younger, then just grew apart as we grew older. She’s married and has a couple daughters, so maybe she’s getting a taste of her own medicine now. haha.

Now that you know about them, here’s a little bit about me. You’ll obviously learn a lot more about me over the course of posting. But I’ll give you a quick overview. I’m in my 40s and I was raised in rural east Texas. I’m currently married and I’ve got two children, one at home and one who’s grown and started a life of their own. I work in the computer industry, I’ve been everything in the industry at some point of time. Tech, DBA, Dev, QA, Security, Sys Arch, CTO, CIO, you name it, I’ve done it.

Now to the part no one wants to talk about, but it’s the point of this blog. I’ve dealt with depression all of my life. This started when I was young, and has varied over the years.

A lot of people have been through a lot more than I have, I realize that. This is my story, my feelings, my life.

I may be using a “nom de plume” for my name, but this is me at the time of writing this.

There will be pictures of me here and there, but I won’t be including any of anyone else unless I obfuscate them.

This is about me, so I’m gonna be selfish, when they want to tell their stories, they can feel free to use my images.