I'm going to be a little rough, but it's not meant to slam you.

Here's what I would see as a hiring manager if this was distilled down to a resume:

1. H.S. Diploma

2. Worked help desk and wiring jobs for 15 years with little to no upward career progression

3. No particular portfolio of work you can point to

4. Personally, given this background, you've ended up with a new family. I don't know if you're struggling to support them or not, but I'm guessing with help desk jobs it's probably a struggle.

All this together can read to a hiring managers as "not responsible or forward thinking enough to trust with a chance. May not actually know how to do the kind of long-term hard work I need for more senior/higher paying positions."

Even with a change in any of those four bullet points, you would read as a better candidate.

1. College degree instead of H.S. Diploma

2. Upward career progression

3. A portfolio of work

4. Family issues are not part of the conversation since your personal issues are not the hiring manager's concern, this bullet doesn't even exist.

I'm not saying you need to have all 4, but any improvement in any of them would help. You don't have to have a college degree if your 15 years of experience showed a progression in roles and responsibilities. Or none of that would matter if you had a bunch of awesome projects up someplace for an employer to look at.

Or with no changes in 2,3 or 4, in 15 years it never occurred to you to go hit the local community college and start on what might even look like a degree path? (I say this one with lots of authority since I was once in a similar situation as you, but I finally got the clue after only 4 years of suffering in shitty jobs).

You can't change #1 quickly, even if you started today, that would be years of hard work. Harder than you can realize right now (I'm speaking from personal experience)

#2 might be a framing issue, you might need to rethink how you present your prior work so that if there was any kind of increase in roles and responsibility it's reflected in your work history (and in how you present yourself during interviews.

#3 is also long-term, but even some github projects that do automatic security audits or test for vulnerabilities, things that a few weeks of learning shell scripts or python could probably get you, those would be huge on your resume. Being able to talk intelligently about those things during an interview would be even better.

#4 here's some tough talk. Your personal issues are of no concern to prospective employers. They honestly don't care, and anything they know about is likely to make them concerned about your reliability as a corporate asset.

#5 Finally, certificates are touchy things, they might open some doors, but not as many as just having a college degree would. Most certifications are barely worth the paper they're printed on. If you are really interested in computer security (a very good, fast growing industry with excellent pay and plentiful job openings waiting for you to apply) you need to get into a college degree program and work towards at least a B.S. in Computer Science, Computer Security or Information Systems and then get CISSP certified.

Here's some even tougher talk, to even be considered for a CISSP certificate you have to have had 5 years of 40-hour/wk work experience in 2 of 10 work domains. https://www.isc2.org/cissp-domains/default.aspx This is the level of candidate that professionals in the field are looking for, full-stop.

You can also become an Associate of (ISC)2 and you'll then have six years to get the necessary experience. https://www.isc2.org/associates/default.aspx

If that's too much, remember an employer is going to think "this guy can't even commit to a real certification program, why should I hire him?". Scout job postings you want, and look at the requirements, that's your guide for what is being looked for. Talent is not one of them.

If this is what you want, you need to start today and do everything necessary to make it happen. You're 15 years behind at this point. But you can make it up.

If this is all too much, you might rethink and go a different direction. A portfolio of tools, a blog on your topic of interest, participation in communities of interest (start networking NOW) all need to be there when you apply for that next, better, job.

#6: okay really finally. You need to start thinking in terms of career and not job. A job is where you go exchange labor for money. You go from job to job, the pay might be better, it might be worse, but they aren't building blocks that get you anywhere in particular. A career is a tower, each place you work gives you building material for that tower and you slowly build up as high as you're capable of going. Jobs are what you do when you're just out of highschool and looking to score some gas money. Careers are what you do to prepare for eventual retirement and raise a family.

I know I'm being harsh, but I know lots of guys in your same place and can't seem to connect the dots, even after decades of walking in place.