The Story of My Life – Part Seven

In continuing the story, this part is a combination of two major topics which I originally planned on writing as two separate posts, but I think combining them will make more sense. As stated before in a previous part, I spent a great deal of the summers from 4th to 11th grade in Las Vegas. Yes, 8 summers in a row I traveled across the country to spend my summer out of school, the time normally meant to relax, be a bum and spend with friends in a place where my only friends were my three cousins who the youngest is 3 years(?) older than me. Needless to say, once they started to get in serious relationships and started families of their own, my only friend became my brother. Don’t get me wrong, I love my brother and this definitely brought us closer than most siblings are. But there is a point you reach in your life where the friendship bonds you form with people are necessary to grow, and spending my summers away from my friends (in addition to the constant moving around) hindered the forming of these friendship bonds. It hasn’t been until I reached college that I’ve really been able to form and keep any sort of friendship bond.

Not only was this time spent away from my home and friends and mom, this time was supposed to be spent with my dad. I can tell you for certain that I spent more time either at camp (the first few years) or with extended family members. Sure, my dad had to work and yeah, he’d take a week or two off to go on the ‘family’ vacation to San Diego and/or Utah. In general though, my time in Las Vegas was spent with other family members. Unfortunately this is not what I went there to do. I enjoyed the time I spent with them, but when that isn’t my purpose it is frustrating. I find the exact feelings hard to portray to anyone, because like a lot of things in my life, unless you’ve experienced something even remotely similar you aren’t going to fully understand what I am trying to explain. The feelings are just better felt than told.

As for the move to NY, this occurred the summer between my freshman and sophomore years of high school. Two separate things happened with this move regarding the men in my life: the turning point with my relationship with my father and the beginning of a series of events involving Jared leading to his eventual leaving. I’ll cover the initial turning point with my dad in this part and leave the rest of the story with him, what I often refer to as the summers in Hell, for the next part of this story. The series of events involving Jared will come up later on. These two things in general are entire stories in themselves.

So, to begin – the first summer in Hell. I’ll most likely bring details up more when I go into the other summers, but here is the general idea of my first trip to Hell. As a high school student, moving to a new place and a new school (again) my interest in the internet was beginning and talking online was a favorite/enjoyable past time. After living in the same house for almost 4 years in Chicago, I made some decent friends for the first time and leaving them was painfully difficult. Having to go out to Las Vegas for a month made the entire situation that much worse. When we first arrived in Vegas, my brother and I discovered that our dad was dating someone. (I have forgotten her name, because I do not care, so she is known to my brother, mom and I as the ‘witch’ and I will thus call her that in this story.) So, in typical summer fashion, my brother and I would spend the evenings with our dad and the witch, unfortunately, and most of the day was spent with our extended family. Now, on a normal summer my brother and I would do a lot of things when our dad wasn’t working with just him. We did so much with the entire family, that as the years went on, my brother and I looked forward to the few times the three of us went and did stuff together.

This summer was a bit different. I was saddened by moving and spent a lot of time online talking to my friends from Chicago, I was truly afraid of losing the only friends I had ever had. (turns out that it actually happened, but that’s another story) It was our last week in Las Vegas and we were leaving soon to return to Chicago for 4 days and then off to our new home in New York. Throughout the three weeks we had been there so far, my brother and I had been talking to our Grandma and Aunt about the entire situation of not being able to spend any time with our dad and they told us to tell him that we wanted to go out to dinner with just him, not the witch. So we did. We told him exactly what we wanted and he agreed to it. One afternoon, I was on the computer and the three of them (my dad, brother and the witch) were heading out to the pool. I didn’t want to go swimming and wanted to stay online talking to my friends. The witch (and my dad for that matter) didn’t understand why I was having such a difficult time with the move since I had moved so much before and so they were having a discussion in my dad’s room. Apparently he told her what my brother and I wanted – for the three of us to just go out one night before we left – and she came bursting out my dad’s room and yelled at me. I don’t remember the exact words, but basically what she said was that I had all the time in the world to spend with my dad while I was there in Vegas and if I really wanted to spend time with him I shouldn’t be on the computer all of the time talking to my friends. I was selfish and my dad barely got to see us, so I should be spending as much time with him as I could and she was part of his life so that meant she was part of my life. She continued a little bit more, before I lost it and ran out of my dad’s house and into the pool area where I sat for almost an hour before my dad came outside to talk to me. He didn’t have much to say, actually he didn’t really say anything meaningful to me because I don’t remember it. I eventually called my mom and talked to her about it all, she obviously got extremely mad and that didn’t help anything. The subject was left alone and needless to say, my brother and I never got our night out with our dad.

The summer still wasn’t over yet. Yes, things got worse. I believe I’ve mentioned briefly in a previous part of the story about the tradition that developed for my brother’s and my last night in Las Vegas – the entire family would go out to dinner. It was just something we always did. Talked about what my brother and I had planned for the school year and what not and talked about possible plans for the next summer. Selfish as it may sound, but the dinner was about my brother and I. This summer however, was different, yet again. My dad and the witch announced their engagement. That’s right. My dad was going to marry her after everything that had happened this summer. I can not begin to describe to you my anger and the overall feelings that went through my head. I couldn’t get onto the plane any faster. I wanted to get the hell out of there.

The next day we boarded the plane to Chicago and left Las Vegas. We got back to our neighbor’s house (where my brother and I were staying for 4 days before heading to NY to meet up with our mom) late that night and normally I always called my dad to let him know we got in. This time however I just called my mom to let her know we made it back. I’m still not sure to this day whether I just forgot to call him or if I purposefully didn’t call because of how angry I was. Regardless, he called an hour or so after we got to our neighbor’s house and I was yelled at for not calling and called inconsiderate and selfish by my dad. This angered me even more, but I had to push it out of my mind so that I could enjoy the time with my friends. My brother however, was the worst he had ever been before. My neighbor’s mom noticed it those four days and said something to my mom about it.

This summer was not only the turning point of my relationship with my dad but the beginning of my brother realizing and understanding the extent of what my dad has done.

~ JenJen ~

Black and White

welp… I feel like crap right now… I’m not sure if it’s from something I ate… or the lack of eating that I seem to be doing lately… or is it because of the lack of sleep I’ve been getting lately? ugh. I don’t know. I’m getting my hair cut at 8am so I should really go to bed… even though I plan on coming home and going back to sleep.

I’ll elaborate on things tomorrow… night

edit: Sat. Aug. 4th

So, I’m sitting here in the family room, just hanging out until work at 5. I’m scheduled to work until 9:30, but I’m sure I’ll be let out early. haha I’m starting to get annoyed with this job… Probably only working one more night (next Friday). Oh well. Right now I’m planning on working there over Christmas break, but that might change. I got more names/addresses to input into the database… Hopefully I’ll hit at least the 5000 mark, I’m 400 shy of 4000 right now. I could really use the 400/500 dollars! hmm My brother is heading off to the airport in about half an hour to go to Las Vegas for two weeks to visit our dad. I won’t see him again until Thanksgiving, unless he decides to come down and visit with my mom for a weekend. I’m going shopping with my Mom tomorrow to target to finish getting some stuff for school and to get a tv!! yay! Sometime this week I’m going with Violet to get bathroom stuff and dress shopping, and then I’ll just need to get some sort of lounging chair and/or an area rug. I’ll hopefully be able to figure stuff out with my roommate/find out soon if she will be switching rooms. So, I got my hair cut yesterday… and I don’t really like it :-/ It’s too short. I wish I just left it at the length that it was at… it was just long enough to do a lot with and I was able to pull it up, leave it down, or straighten it so that it looked good. haha So hopefully it will grow out fast!!! Okay, so I should probably go do some more data entry/eat something/get dressed! Probably won’t write again until I’m at school… or after band camp! haha

~  JenJen ~

Dreams, Stress and the Unexpected

So the other night, might have even been last night ( I can’t remember) I had this really weird, yet thought provoking dream. I should have wrote about it like as soon as I woke up from it, but anyways – I had a dream in which I just got engaged and was planning out the details for my wedding. (I have no idea what made me have a dream about getting married! haha) Somehow, I don’t remember the chain of events, I was convinced to contact my dad and to tell him about my engagement and to invite him to the wedding. So, I wrote this really long email and was able to tell him everything I’ve felt over the past few years and forgave him for things that I haven’t been able to yet. Oddly, the message I got back from him was just as long and the last line was ‘will you allow me to walk you down the aisle?’ Which caught me off guard, for I had already decided on who was walking me down the aisle. I then sent him a message back saying something to the effect of ‘the person walking me down the aisle will be someone who has been in my life for the past few years, so no, I can’t allow you to walk me down the aisle. but i would greatly appreciate you coming to the wedding, that would mean a lot. And then the dream was over. I just found it weird that I had a dream where I was forgiving my dad for everything when I refuse to talk to him in real life and don’t have any contact with him. I mean, when I think about my wedding right now, my dad isn’t part of it. Maybe he’s attending, but he’s definitely not walking me down the aisle. I guess it was just like hmm… maybe I should think about forgiving him before the issue of my wedding comes up.

Anyways – The past week or so has been really stressful, still kind of stressful. I have a paper due tomorrow and then my final paper (8-10 pages) is due on Monday. Then I’ll finally be done with my summer class. I’m very eager to return to school and to my friends there. I miss them so much! I haven’t been working much, the store apparently is over in hours so they’ve been having to cut shifts and limit hours. I’m only getting about 2 shifts a week now, oh well. I’ve typed about 3000 names/addresses and have about another 2000 or so to go. I’ll be able to spend a lot of time on that next week when I’m done with my class. On top of all of this, I got a very interesting/emotional email from my ex on Sunday night. I was completely shocked and was not expecting anything like that email to come my way. Now, I’m waiting for him to have time to talk so that I can tell him that it was too little, too late. Okay, well he said a lot and put out a lot, however, it’s too late. He had his chance back in October and I moved on since then.

Well, that’s enough for now. I always feel like when I’m writing these posts that I’m never really talking about anything worthwhile or seemingly interesting. Oh well… after all, they are just my thoughts.

22 sleeps, as Cait would say, until I’m back at school

~ JenJen ~

Protected: Lost, Looking for the Life Saver

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Nothing Important

I’m sitting in bed right now, no one is really online to talk to… my one dog, who normally sleeps with my brother, is asleep in a little ball at the bottom of my bed… I have music playing on my lap top and I’m trying to decide if I should go to bed or not. I slept horribly last night, and in fact I haven’t been sleeping well lately at all. I don’t know why all of a sudden I am having a hard time sleeping, but I hope it subsides soon. Not much to post, really, got the grade on my first paper for my summer course today – an A-, definitely happy about that…  I went shopping with my mom today, didn’t plan on buying anything, but I ended up getting a bunch of shirts that were on sale at JC Penny’s and a pair of sneakers… but I think I might have to return them because I might have gotten the wrong size, guess I should try them on tomorrow! What else… hmmm… I seem to be much happier lately, during the day that is, but I tend to get sad at night, I don’t really know why either…. oh well. Well, I guess I should probably head to bed, need to finish reading the book for class tomorrow (about 70 pages left), work on the data entry stuff and then I’m meeting some friends in the city for dinner!!! Looking forward to that!

- sorry for the rambling and the non-important post -

~ JenJen ~

I gave in.

So I caved. I should just face the fact that following my friend’s advice on this situation isn’t going to work. It was a great suggestion and would probably tell me some stuff, but I could only take it so long. I actually did get a little information but I don’t think it really means anything.

Anyways, I’m bored. I have nothing to do. I’ve been getting in bad moods a lot lately and I hate it. I wake up, usually somewhat early, do whatever it is I woke up to do (usually take my brother somewhere) then go back to bed. Eventually I wake up, eat, shower, do some stuff around the house, read, watch tv, eat dinner, read, watch a movie or more tv, then go to bed early. I only worked two shifts this past week, and I’m only scheduled for two this coming week. I’m hoping that as soon as I finish training (which I will be on wed.) that I’ll get a few more shifts to keep me busy. My online summer course begins in two weeks and I know I will become busy doing that. But I think my boredom is making me angry and I want nothing more than to return to Nova right now. I haven’t hung out with my friends here in probably 2 to 3 weeks. They’ve been giving me a hard time about it and I said fine, call me or let me know next time you do something. They haven’t called or told me what is going on. So here I sit, on a Saturday afternoon/evening, talking online with my friend from school and typing this. I’m actually getting kinda angry and sad as I sit here and type this. Why you may ask? the simple answer is that I don’t know. The complicated answer is that I can come up with things which I think are attributing to my moods, but I really don’t care to list those here. Next rant is that things with my dad are still the same, but on the home front i’m getting attacked at all angles. My dad’s birthday was yesterday, almost all week my brother and mom begged me to call him or at least email. so i said fine. I’ll email. It was very simple – just wanted to say happy birthday <3 Jen. That was it. Not such a simple reply -

Thank You Jennifer for the B-Day wish, I do hope that you & I can talk soon about what is bothering you about me. I do not want our relationship to be like this as we both get older, so please call me when you are ready so we can talk. Ever one here
in Vegas loves you and misses you!
Talk to you soon,
With all my love,
Dad

OKay, so he was being nice and did acknowledge that I need time and that he will give it to me, but ugh. I just don’t want to deal with this stuff now. I need to get other stuff, my life, figured out first. I’m just sick of adult males in my life and sadly i’ve basically written off the idea of a father. The only parent I have is my mom and she’s all I have. I can’t deal with my dad now, i’m not ready, and getting that email from him yesterday just about caused me to explode.

Mom’s out of town all week, ironically she’s at conference in Las Vegas. So I’m stuck at home taking care of the dogs and my brother. I only work twice this coming week and until Wednesday I have basically nothing to do. Maybe i’ll go to the library again to find some books to hold me over until my summer course starts, or maybe i’ll just get a head start on those readings. Who knows.

I never usually want anything. But right now I have two wants. Unfortunately, at the moment, I can’t have either.  :-/

~ JenJen ~

Blocking Words

My brother really scared me last night. I’m not entirely sure how it happened, but the situation could have been much worse – My brother got home from school around 3 as usual, and I left for an appointment at 3:30. I told him where I was going and said where mom was at. I got back shortly before 5, came in the house and talked to him a bit, then fed the dogs and went upstairs. I was leaving for a moving at 7, so around 6 I closed my door to get changed. I had just been laying in bed talking online but he had apparently, somehow, forgotten that I was home. He came running upstairs and threw my door open with a knife drawn. He scared the hell out of me and kinda scared himself. He had no clue that I was home. I’m not sure how he forgot that quickly that I was home, especially since I was talking to him while I was downstairs. He said he’s just not used to me being home and is used to being the only one in the house until mom gets home after 6. I guess I just hope this isn’t a sign for anything bad.

In other news, I had an interview yesterday with Blockbuster, I basically have the job. They had to do a background check as a formality so the manager is calling me back tomorrow to set up a time to go in and fill out paperwork and to let me know when the orientation is. I have to attend a 2 hour orientation where they will tell me all about the company and what not. He said I should be able to get on the schedule and start training next week! I’ll mostly be working nights and weekends which I don’t mind. I’ll just be glad to have a job, earn money, and be keeping busy! And hey! discounts on movies are always a plus (I think I get discounts, not positive, haha)

Hate me, I’m the one you need

I’ve been posting a lot lately… I guess a lot has been on my mind. Some stuff I still haven’t been able to write down here or even express to anyone. I guess it would be helpful if I could figure out for myself what I’m feeling, instead of expecting others to guide me through my thoughts.

<sickness rant coming up>

I am really cautious of complaining about being sick, ever since my one friend put things into perspective for me, but right now, I am seriously sick of this. I haven’t been feeling great since I returned home. I had an asthma attack last Sunday, allergy induced, and it was one of the scariest things ever. I couldn’t breathe. Anyways, lately my allergies have been worse than I’ve ever had them before, I’ve been really tired, and have had the worst headaches ever. Today I slept off a headache during a 2 hour nap from 3:30 to 5:30… which is now causing me to be awake probably until 2ish… which is bad considering I have to be awake at 7:30 to drive my mom to work so that I can have the car to run errands/search for a job. The headache is back though, so maybe I’ll go to bed soon in hopes of sleeping that one off as well. ugh.

<end sickness rant>

In other news… my friends here at home think that I think I am too cool to hang out with them now… they just don’t get it. I want to just to explain it to them, but I don’t know how to explain everything. Only one friend truly understands me, her and I are like emotionally the same, understanding things the other goes through. I’m glad that even though she is staying at school this summer, she is only 20min. away and I’ll be hanging out with her a lot!I was looking at some pictures my friends from school posted online from senior week, I realized just how much I miss them. These three months are going to be really long and I wish they would go by faster. Hopefully I’ll get a job soon and that will help pass time. I’m also excited for my summer sisterhood with the girls. We decided that in order for us to keep in touch with each other, we’d write a letter each week to another girl and send a picture or movie stub or anything along with it, and then during band camp we’ll put everything together into a scrap book so all of us can read the letters. So, since there are 5 of us, each week I’ll receive a letter from a different girl, 3 from each girl throughout the summer. I think I’ll actually go write my first letter after I finish this post!

The only other thing of which I wish to discuss tonight, would be that of music. Since being home I’ve taken a small step away from listening to music, but am slowly getting back into my habits of listening nonstop. There is something about songs, the ones that I really like, and listen to over and over; they make me feel something that nothing else can. Sometimes they remind me of a person in my life, of a thought that I had, a dream of mine, a secret I keep inside my heart, or of a situation I had been in. Listening to them remind me that there is a life I have to live; I can’t dwell on the past or on the future, only on today. Sometimes the songs remind me of a sad part of my life, but regardless, I leave my listening of music a happy person, excited to live and excited to see what life has for me. For an example, I’m a band geek, guilty as charged… and currently I’m listening to cadences  (thanks TB) they bring me back to school, to all my band friends, to all of the fun I’ve had this first year in college, being crazy with my friends. But specifically, these cadences bring me back to those long Friday nights and Saturday afternoons, playing at the football games (so what if our football team sucks?)… us girls all had our seats on the benches… same spots for every game… us crazy band kids having our weird traditions to go along with the drumline’s songs/cadences… ridiculous half time shows… crazy drum majors… I hate football, but I love wasting away the days with my friends and with band. These people, this organization, is what has made my first year of college so amazing. Without them, I don’t know where I’d be after my first year of college. Wow, haha, I did not mean to go into this much of an explanation, guess it just shows how much music is a part of my life and how much songs/cadences really mean something to me.

Alright, off to write my first sisterhood letter of the summer!

~ JenJen ~

Home Sweet Home… or Not

I’ve been home for just over 48 hours and I already miss Nova. Or is it the people? I can’t tell. I feel out of place here and miss feeling part of the group. I just came back from playing cards and hanging out with some people and well I did not enjoy myself at all. I really wish I did enjoy myself while hanging out with my friends from here because I feel like the summer is just going to be miserable… I just need to get a job so that I am kept busy for a majority of my time and feel like I have something to do in life. Sadly, I am looking forward to my summer class to start so that I have something else to occupy my time with.

In regards to people changing during college, sure most of my friends here may have changed, but I think that out of anyone, I have changed the most. And not so much changed as in I do things differently now, more so as in matured even more than I already was. Freshman year at college taught me so many things, especially about myself. I have learned how to have fun, the kind of fun that I enjoy, just hanging out and relaxing with friends who are mature and don’t need to go out partying to have a good time. I’d have to say that I probably most enjoyed sitting around with my friends talking about things we discussed in class and about things that actually matter in life. I remember one discussion I had with Lilly and Violet this past year, we were just talking about society and the future and what life will be like for our kids to grow up in compared to how we grew up. I miss those types of discussions… why can’t I have those with people from home? oh wait… because they find it more interesting to embarrass people, recall stories from middle school, and be stupid. I just feel out of place and I’m not interested in anything they talk about or even what they want to do.

I’m not really sure where this was going – or if this is even how I truly feel or am I trying to cloud over other feelings to suppress them with other minor things that are irritating me?

A cafeteria turned study lounge, 20 students, lap tops, headphones… exhaustion

I have now been in the cafeteria (the spit as we like to call it) for exactly 6 hours. I came down at 6:15 with everyone for dinner and have been here ever since, working my way through my Spanish study guide. Within that time, I made it through two thirds of the study guide. I am exhausted. I can’t remember the last time I spent this much time on a single subject straight through, let alone on homework. I think over the weekend I spent a total of an hour? writing a two page paper for my history class. I knew I would be stressed today, because I had my last class in every subject, except calculus. I knew I was getting study guides/essay topics for the finals, but I didn’t realize how much work would be involved in preparing for these 5 finals. My first two are on Tuesday, then I have one on Wed, one on Thurs. and my last one on Friday. I am just worn out right now. I know as soon as I go back up to my room I will pass out on my bed and sleep straight through until 9:45 – when I need to get up so that I can get dressed, go eat some breakfast, and walk to my chiro. appointment which is at 11 (it’s about a half hour walk from my dorm).

Well, the band formal is tomorrow night, should be interesting, as always and at 3:30 tomorrow I will have finished my last class as a freshman in college. So surreal to think that my freshman year is almost over. Just have to get through 4 pm next Friday and I’m free until July when my online summer course begins! Can’t wait to enjoy the month and a half of freedom from school. Well, until I return home, next Saturday, you probably won’t be hearing from me on here!

Goodbye school – HELLO SUMMER!!!

~ JenJen ~