~ JenJen ~

~ JenJen ~

It’s been kind of a rough break though, emotionally. I thought the major reason for my emotional moods this break so far had to do with some things between my boyfriend and I, but when I woke up this morning I realized what was the base of all my issues – a conversation my mom and I had while we were out shopping Saturday. She told me how they had changed her responsibilities at work and she hardly does anything anymore. She’s bored and this is the first time in the 20+ years that she has worked with this company where she is unhappy with her job. This led to the conversation which I believe is causing me to be in a weird mood. She talked to me about selling our house and moving into a smaller place somewhere. Nothing will happen, if it even does happen, until my brother moves onto college… when I’m entering my senior year of college.

However, this conversation still messed with my mind, and heart. I know I haven’t lived here my entire life, I know people who have lived in their house since they were born, or at least since they were old enough to remember their house. I imagine if their parents decided to up and sell their house that would be a horrible feeling, probably worse than what I’m feeling. Or maybe not, maybe it wouldn’t be that big of a deal to them. I know for me though, after moving around my entire life, living in 5 states, 6 now that I’m living in PA for college, and spending 8 summers of my school years in Las Vegas – this is a big deal to me. I’ve finally found a place that I can call home, somewhere where my Mom and brother are always at, my dogs are here, I have a room that I finally call mine and know that it is mine and I won’t have to up and leave in 3 years. It’s hard for me to fully express how I feel about this, I hope I’m getting the point across.

I’ve dreamed my whole life that once I get married and have a house of my own with my husband and children, I would have a place to return to, where I can show my kids my room and say “this is where Mommy lived”. To be able to visit my Mom and stay in my room, whether I’m married or not, to always know that I have a place to return to if something were to go wrong in my life… to be able to return home and sleep in my own room and not some guest room or the family room of a smaller house. To visit my Mom with my husband and kids and to have places to stay when we visit, to have a place to be reminded of memories. This is the biggest thing, memories. I finally have a place, my home, with good and bad memories, but mostly good. Every time I come home from college I feel this welcoming feeling and know that I am home.

Maybe I’m being selfish for wanting this, but I have asked for very few things in my life and this is just one of those things. I wish I could tell my mom this, but there is nothing I can say to her. She says the house is going to be too much work for her when Chris is gone, with the two dogs and the hugeness of the house, if I could help her with it I would. So I don’t know what to do or how to deal with this. But I really believe that this has been the underlying issue lately and everything else has just put me over the top. Hopefully I can deal with this, or at least not let it bother me until I have to deal with it.

~ JenJen ~

A major topic of conversation lately has been time and the differences between high school relationships and college relationships.  It’s hard to describe in words, but it seems that things move faster when in a relationship in college than they did during high school. I’ve decided that the main reasons for this is that now that we are in college, we are not only older and more mature, but we are on our own. We control our time, with no parents present to tell us what we can and can not do. There are no restrictions as to when we can see each other and hang out. No car rides to the other person’s house, just a short walk to the other’s room, with the only thing preventing us from doing anything being classes and homework and the occasional side activity. I’m not sure what more I wanted to say about this except that it has come up in conversation a lot and I find the whole concept intriguing and interesting. I definitely plan to continue to try and compare and understand the differences, as well as to possibly figure out why a month in a college relationship covers more ground than that of a high school relationship.

What I really wanted to write about tonight though was in regards to thoughts of the future that I’ve been having lately.  These thoughts are kind of along the same line as the concept of time discussed above regarding relationships, but this I feel is a little more in depth than just the length of a relationship. I’m almost done with my second year of college, meaning that in about two months I will be half way through my college career. In about two years I will be graduating with a physics bachelor’s degree and hopefully a computer science minor. Then, if all goes according to plan, I’ll be enrolling in a 2 year graduate program to get my masters degree in medical physics. So theoretically, I have to survive through 4 more years of school to achieve the goals that I want to achieve. Hopefully I don’t get sick of school before then. Anyways, at the end of this year I will be turning 21… life is moving fast. For some reason, I’ve had thoughts, some dreams even (day dreams mostly), about me getting married and having kids. I’ve always thought about my wedding and having kids, as I’m sure everyone has had at some point or another, but lately these thoughts have been recurring more frequently. I am kind of enjoying them. It’s exciting to think about the future, but scary at the same time. My mom was 26 when she had me, 29 when she had my brother. Theoretically I’d like to have kids before I’m thirty, or at least before I reach my mid thirties, I want to be around when my kids have kids. To think that I could be married and have kids of my own within ten years is exciting and down right scary at the same time.          I’m not sure where I was going with this topic or if I was even trying to get to a point. Simply writing this out is enough for me right now. Life is so exciting and I’m really getting to realize this now. I’m so thankful for that.

Spring break starts on Friday, I’ll be glad to go home for a week and see my family and dogs, and sleep in my big bed! And the break from classes and work is very much needed. The hiatus from my friends and my boyfriend is not welcoming, but I (we) will manage just fine… stupid conversations can make such a big difference! 
~ JenJen ~

Well, here’s to hoping for a good weekend… and maybe even a Nova win?!

Oh yeah, the semester is going well, just a few more weeks until mid-terms… and then spring break! I miss my dogs… and my mom… I can’t wait to go home for a week and spend time with them! Look for an interesting post about ‘time’ in the next few weeks!

~ JenJen ~

Anyways, classes started yesterday. Mondays are really going to hurt me – 4 classes, 1 three hour lab. In all, a total of 8 hours of class on Monday. Tuesdays are much better with only two classes which the first one doesn’t start until 1. Wednesdays are repeats of Mondays but with no lab, Thursdays I only have 1 class that doesn’t start until 2:30 and Friday I only have 3 classes with no night class. So really, Monday is pretty much the only crappy day of the week. I’ve been to all of my classes now and I really think I’m going to enjoy them all.

Gen. Chem 2 – Having a younger professor is great. He realizes that none of us are chem majors and isn’t requiring us to know ridiculous details. He gives us note pages which are printouts of the overheads and today he gave us about 4 pages of review from last semester. No longer do I have quizzes every week and I’m actually going to have homework assigned, which actually makes me happy. Hopefully I’ll get a better grade in this course this semester.

Modern Physics – I’m going to love this class. We walked in yesterday, and the first thing we were told was that everything we’ve been taught in the last three semesters (or 3 1/2 years for me of physics) is a lie. Our first ‘extra credit’ assignment is to explain why it’s all been a lie! haha… that’s just great. He’s also going to be giving us blueprints for a time machine so we can travel to the future. What an interesting class…

Math Physics – What can I say? It’s my two favorite subjects, math and physics, combined into one course. Not to mention the course is taught by my adviser and quite possibly one of my favorite professors I’ve had so far.

Modern Physics Lab – This is going to be a very interesting/intense lab. Thankfully I only have one lab this semester versus the three I had last semester. But the labs seem very interesting and the subject matter is intriguing in itself. Also, at the end of the semester we each have to give a 20 minute talk on a topic of our choice. I’m actually excited for this, to get to explore in depth a topic of my interest in physics.

Algorithms and Data Structures 1 – Okay I lied when I said all my classes were interesting. This one will hopefully pick up, but the first class was extremely slow and boring. This is my two hour night class, two days a week. It’s the first course in the computer science minor sequence so I had to take it. I’ve already had 1 1/2 years of programming so I know a lot of what we’ll be learning. So let’s just say this will be an easy/relaxing class compared to my others.

History of Christianity -  My intro to Theology course, I’m taking it with a friend which is nice. We had our first class today, it’s going to be reading intensive, but only 1 paper and two tests. The subject material seems very interesting though and the professor is extremely into what he is teaching, which I really like. One thing in particular that I’m excited about for this class is that we are all providing him with what he calls ‘no limits questions’. We can ask him any question pertaining to religion, turn it in on Thursday and throughout the semester at the beginning of each class he is going to answer all of our questions.

~ JenJen ~

Links: one, two, three, four, five

Part Six:

Currently in my life I am trying to return to my religion, my faith in God, my ability to believe in the unbelievable; but most importantly my ability to believe in myself. I lost all of this over the years, mostly due to the difficulties I’ve dealt with. I’ve survived everything, but in the process I lost my ability to believe. I can not place this loss of ability on anything in particular, however my lack of faith and my hiatus from religion can be traced back to the actions and interactions with one person in my life – Jared.

I’ve never considered myself an extremely religious person, even when I did go to mass every Sunday with my Mom and brother. However, I did go every Sunday and attended religious ed (CCD) classes for 8 years and received all of my sacraments, etc. I actually enjoyed going to mass and the religious part of my life that I had developed. Sure I always gave my mom a hard time about going to class or to mass, but so does every kid. Looking back I realize that I really did enjoy that hour every Sunday just sitting there, listening to the Scriptures, but more importantly listening to myself.

When Jared entered my life around 4th grade, we slowly stopped attending mass on Sundays. My mom insisted that we still attend religion class, but Sunday mass became virtually non-existent in our household. It’s hard to explain exactly why things fell apart, why we stopped going, why we still aren’t attending mass, but I’ll do my best to express it all so that it’s easier to understand.

Jared, for the purpose of this story we will say is an Atheist. It doesn’t really explain him fully because I do believe that he believed in God, just went about it a funny way and didn’t like to show it to anyone. Nor did he follow a religion. I want to say that he was raised Methodist or Baptist, but that’s just a guess. The best way to explain this is that religion became a source of argument in my house. Jared would ask my brother and I questions about being a Catholic, ask questions about mass and religion class. Most adults who attended Catholic school their entire life and even those who just have gone to mass every Sunday of their life can’t answer a lot of questions about their religion and faith. So as a 4th grader (continued until I was a senior in high school) who only attended religion class once a week during the school year, I didn’t have the answers to most of the questions. I didn’t even fully understand what I was being taught or what I heard during mass. If I couldn’t answer Jared’s questions, how was my brother, who is 3 years younger than me, supposed to answer them? He’s not. My mom, who was raised a strict Catholic and attended mass every Sunday and went to mass for every Holy day and attended religion class couldn’t explain the things Jared wanted to know.

Now this would all be fine if he was just curious about Catholicism and our religion in general, and at first I thought that was all it was. However, as the years went on, he never stopped asking/harassing us about it. I began to realize that it was more than curiosity and like the other things he had done, it was a source of annoyance for us and he knew that. There is something twisted about that. He knew, as well as the rest of us, that every time someone spoke about religion in the house (or car even) a long drawn out argument would follow and the domino effect would begin.

When we moved into the house, we began to carpool to religion class with our neighbors. The four of us (my brother, me and my two neighbors) began to beg our other parents to pick us up or take us to church. The car rides with Jared were horrible. He would question everyone and embarrass us. Questions as simple as ‘what did you learn tonight?’ would be impossible for us to answer because sometimes we didn’t really do anything and so we didn’t learn anything and he wouldn’t accept that response. And if you are reading this and have attended religion classes, you understand that more often than not you never learned much in your 8 years of attending the classes. It’s not that they didn’t read you stories from the Bible or try and teach you the background of your religion, it’s that we were simply to young to understand and make sense of it.

Eventually, we became one of those Easter/Christmas families — the families that were the reason for the church to be filled beyond capacity during those holidays causing the normal parishioners to arrive like an hour or more early so that they would be sure to get a seat in the church and not have to stand or go sit in the ‘overflow’ area… usually the church’s basement or gym! I’ve always been annoyed by those families… what makes you think that going just twice a year is going to ‘fulfill’ your religious duties so to speak. Yet here I have become part of one of those families, simply because someone in my life put so much fear into us. So much fear to the point where not having those conversations which turned into arguments was more beneficial to our family than us attending mass and being faithful to our religion.

To some, this might be difficult to understand/comprehend because religion has always been a part of their life, however, Jared was enough of a reason to stop going to mass. I can’t really explain it more than I have here, this is the best explanation I have. Unfortunately it seems that this is one of those things that where if you haven’t experienced it first hand or you don’t fully understand the history of Jared and our life it’s just not going to be easy to understand our reasons for placing religion on the ‘back burner’.

I am now attending a Catholic University and my first semester there I tried to go back to mass at our Sunday night student masses. This lasted only so long and I quickly began to look at it as an annoyance and I became lazy. However, the past semester things in my life have changed a lot, I’ve changed a lot. For one thing, I began to write this story again, which I started first semester of my freshman year at college. Also I’m beginning to address things from my past, and these posts are helping me with that. Additionally, I’m changing some things personally and dealing with a lot of personal issues. A good friend has aided me in returning to religion and at the end of the semester I began to go back to mass. I really was on a good streak, going every Sunday, and then I got sick, haha. So unfortunately I haven’t been to mass these past few weeks except for Christmas mass, which I probably shouldn’t have gone to with how sick I was. Anyways, I digress, I’m finally in a place in my life where I’m able to get over the fear of practicing my religion and being religious. It’s going to take some time, I know, but eventually I hope to have my faith back which I know will aid in believing in myself again.

~ JenJen ~

I was debating writing another part to the story of my life tonight, but I’m not really in the mood for it. Maybe tomorrow. Anyways, break is almost over and I have mixed feelings about it. In all honesty, this 3 1/2 week break sucked. I know, I still have one more week left, however, I’ve already outdone myself and am tired. I’ve seen two people, yes two, since being home. I haven’t even seen V who lives 10 min from me… Stupid mono. I’m feeling better, I really am, I’m just still tired. I have more energy, but I think I’m expending it faster than I’m gaining it. I wish I knew when to say “enough is enough” and learn to just stop and relax without feeling… I don’t know how to describe the feeling… just I dislike not being able to do things, but I need to accept that I’m still sick and will be until I can learn to relax. At the same time, I have been able to relax and take a break from school and the life at Nova, for the most part. I have spent time with my Mom, brother and Tom and that has definitely been great.

I am ready to go back to Nova though, to be able to see my friends and even to start classes again. I’m looking forward to my new classes this semester and I just need something to make my brain work. I’ve been watching too much tv and although I’ve been reading books, its just not the same as challenging my brain at school.

This break I’ve also been dealing with a lot of things emotionally, especially with being sick. Mainly though, I’ve started writing The Story of my Life again and that’s gotten me to do a lot of thinking regarding my life, present, past and future. It’s been good reflection and thinking time, but stressful and somewhat painful at times. I’ve written two more parts since break started and I hope to write at least two more before break ends. Additionally, I’ve been facing reality, trying to maintain the person I am and accept certain situations at the same time. This is always harder when as a person I tend to focus on others more than myself. Granted, I haven’t been doing that as much lately, but it still is an issue.

Needless to say, I’m ready to go back to Nova and to start a fresh new semester, in more ways than one.

~ JenJen ~

My head lies to my heart
And my heart it still believes
It seems the ones who love us are the ones
That we deceive
But you’re changing everything
You’re changing everything in me

I don’t have specific dates, locations, situations for the following memories, however what I’m about to reveal all were situations that were most likely recurring and not a one time incident. Things were probably always as bad as they were near the end of Jared’s time with us, but I never fully recognized the extent of the situation early on.

In our house, food was individual people’s property. For instance, if someone went shopping and brought home a bag of chips, or a box of cereal, or a pack of cookies… it was theirs, because god forbid they share with anyone. Why all this madness you ask? It all started randomly when one day Jared came down to get cookies and he got so mad because ‘cookies were missing’ from his package of cookies. From then on, if you touched anything that he bought himself you were dead. So, we didn’t touch anything because the repercussions were not worth the indulgence of the food. This habit(?), I guess you would call it that, spread to my brother and I and we’ve just now started to get past that feeling of betrayal and hurt when someone eats the food that we’ve bought ourselves. Something else that this habit of Jared’s left in me, particularly, is asking to eat food. I’ve been conscious about this habit of my own, but I still catch myself in the act on occasion. For example, I’d be over in a friend’s room or on a trip with a bunch of people and even when I’ve already been offered the food, I still find myself asking if I may eat it… it makes for an awkward few moments.

Other things include my brother getting grounded during Christmas vacation for the entire time for talking back to Jared, I think. We’d get in trouble for things like going to my mom for permission on things versus him, calling my mom up to ask if we could go to a friend’s house when he was home would really piss him off. As the years went on, he stopped eating dinner with us. Whether he made the meal or my mom did, he’d take his plate either upstairs to his room, or into the den to eat. Making noise was another no-no in our house. Mornings were the quietest time ever, someone visiting wouldn’t know that people were awake in the house. Breakfast was eaten in silence and getting breakfast was a delicate task. You banged your spoon on your cereal bowl and somehow Jared would hear it and come out from his room and yell at you for waking him up. Just walking around in the house was apparently an issue. Who cares if I walk heavy for a less than 100 pound girl? Oh well he did, apparently, I walk too hard on my heels and make too much noise, even on the carpet. Lets see, what else did he have issues with? Oh yes, when he did decide to eat dinner with us, or if he just wanted to actually eat at the table, his seat better be open. No one should be in his seat. His seat was always the one by the back door, head of the table. Since when is a seat yours? It’s the same concept as the food. Ah, yes, punishments. My brother always got grounded. I was rarely grounded, mainly because I avoided any and all contact with Jared as possible. But punishments for my brother included room confinement and essays. Yes, I said essays. One time my brother and I both had to write an apology letter to Jared. I forget why, but we weren’t allowed to leave the house unless we wrote it, oh and it had to be typed. Who knows why.

That is everything that I can really remember… I’m sure there were more things, but I think you get the idea. Well, I believe that is enough for this part of the story. Pretty much covers his personality, or at least what’s important and notable, of his personality for the understanding of this story. I’ll leave with a heads up of the next few parts – so you know where this is heading and so I can remember what I want to write about!

- religion and Jared
- summers in Vegas
- the move to NY
- Jared and NY
- three summers of hell
- relationship with dad
- Tom

I have a lot of writing to do! I better get moving! Until next time…

~ JenJen ~