What's your MGSF story?

[Kestrel]

There was a thread like this one on Pricey's revival board, but I have more hope for this one seeing the traction we've had going on in the past week.

Mine's kind of a sob story. I first joined MGSF in 2010, when I was just 12. I wasn't active and just lurked, but came back in 2012 as Kestrel around the time the MGO2 servers were shutting down to try to find some of the friends I had made on the game. I didn't find any, but I made new ones on the boards. My dad kicked me out only a few months after I joined back up, and that's when I started GRU with Crab. I really can't overstate just how helpful the site was in keeping me together during a very difficult time in my life. I know I was a dumb teenager back then, but I sincerely miss the days when I would come home from school and stay up all night talking to friends.

In 2015 my mom's boyfriend kicked me out of the house the day I graduated from highschool, and I spent a long time drifting around the east coast when I was 17. My activity on the site started to dwindle after that. I joined the Marine Corps the next year after getting bored with being homeless, and only came back on occasion to check on the boards. I think it was around this time all the smaller orgs started falling apart. I'm not really sure what made me leave the forums for good, I can't really remember.

Since then, I spent 6 tumultuous years in the Marine Corps as an artillery tech. I spent a lot time in Japan, went to places like Korea, Australia, Vietnam, and the Philippines. Deployed to Syria in 2018, and came back stateside in 2021. Completely missed the whole COVID thing. I got out in 2022 as a Corporal after a long battle with pretty serious injury that saw me dropped out of EOD school. I was pretty disillusioned with the military and government as a whole by that time anyway, and wanted out. I got married, no kids, thank God. In these past few years I've lived in California, Minnesota, and most recently Wyoming. Been working a lot of odd jobs mostly centered around automotive mechanics and construction. I'm in a pretty big historical fencing club here, and run marksmanship classes to teach people how to shoot on the side whenever I can. I work on project cars as a hobby and make some extra money as the neighborhood gearhead. I may be moving again soon, maybe somewhere down South this time. Life isn't great, but it's okay, and that's all I can really ask for right now.

I'd really like to hear how life has been for the rest of you. It's been a long, long time.