The Story of My Life – Part Four

It’s been a while since I wrote part 3 of this story; recent reflections and conversations have inspired me to pick up the computer and start writing this story again. I last left off with 4th grade and me breaking my elbow, now that I’m on semester break I hope to write more of this and hopefully catch up to present day. There will be many parts to this story, and the story will now begin to include other people besides my dad, so I’ll quickly mention these other people – Jared, my now ex-step dad, enters my life around 5th grade, in Chicago, IL and remains in my life until January of my Senior year in high school; Tom enters my life around February/March of Senior year and is still present in my life at this time. It’ll be a while before I get to Tom, but I mention him now just to bring all the people into the story. I also feel that I should mention at this time that, although this is my life story, it mainly deals with the adults in my life and my family; this story doesn’t venture into anything with my friends or any of my personal relationships… that would be an entire story in itself! So I continue where I left off… 4th grade…

Half way through 4th grade, my mom got another job promotion and we moved to Chicago, IL. We moved into an apartment and went to a school in a not so good area. Sometime between moving and half way through 5th grade, my Mom met Jared. Jared lived two floors above us in the apartments and worked under my mom. They began to date and he began staying over in our apartment often. I don’t remember all the details from this time period, just mostly the bad times. So these are the times upon which I will reflect. From the time spent in the apartment, the biggest memory that stands out is the one in, now looking back, I realize was when I recognized that Jared was an alcoholic and is one of the scariest moments of my life. One night, Jared was out at a work party and got really drunk. He called my mom and asked her to come pick him up, it was probably about 2am. I was in 5th grade at the time and my brother was in 2nd grade. My mom got us out of bed, the apartments weren’t safe to stay in alone that late at night, and we got in the van to go pick Jared up. He was downtown, about an hours drive. I remember falling asleep in the back of the van on the long bench and my brother was asleep on the middle bench. We finally found where he was, after calling his friend’s to find out what bar they were at because his cell wasn’t on. On our way back to the apartment, he kept talking and laughing and all my brother and I were trying to do was sleep. We were passing through a toll booth and my mom rolled the window down to put the change in, Jared grabbed change and started throwing it across my mom and through the window. I could be wrong, but I feel like he started throwing change at my brother and I as well. Anyways, this was one of the scariest moments I’ve experienced. I’m not exactly sure why, but most likely the combination of being woken from sleep, being half awake, loud noises, and coins flying caused the fear.

Jared wasn’t a physical person, and never actually hurt my brother or I, but the verbal abuse became unbearable as I got older and realized what was going on…

I’ll have to continue this part later or pick up with another part to this story. I’ve been sick lately and my brain is just about fried. Until next time…

~ JenJen ~

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