My story, while not as bad in many respects as yours was just as bad if not worse as far as learning was concerned. (Better home life thankfully) I lived in the deserts of West Texas, in a poor community. There were no computers I could use, and my parents actually said "we didn't have computers when we were kids, you don't need them now", so I had next to zero family support, and next to no opportunity to learn elsewhere as the industry of my town revolved around cantaloup, onions, and cattle. I couldn't even get something from a business trash pile because business trash piles in that are consisted of animal waste and rotten vegetation.
Despite that I read Discover Magazine, I read 321 Contact when I was young, I read Omni, I read Popular Science, I kept up with what was going on even if it was what was going on in what was practically a parallel universe. Every piece of electronic junk I could get my hands on I drug home and took apart, one of the first things I successfully fixed was 45 lb Sony Betamax. I had motors, batteries, LED's old telephones with asbestos and cloth insulators, microphones speakers, you name it hooked up with chewing gum and electric tape. Finally when I was 17 I was given an 8088 - this was right after the first socket 7 Pentiums came out. I was overjoyed to have it.
Within a year in the business world I was ahead of many peers my own age who grew up immersed in computers (yes I moved to a metro area). Within two or three years the country bumpkin origins story was nearly completely neutralized - with one lingering exception. I never really learned to program. I do alright when I need to alter some code, but I'm not a coder, and I never found time to really learn to do it well. I was always too busy doing massive amounts of sysadmin, cabling, hardware, various whatever else work. It's still on my to-do list but it matters less all the time.