Personal Narrative: My Step-Anon Changed My Life

Since I was a kid, I had a ton of responsibilities, cleaning up after myself, doing chores, managing to not fight with my brother, although we fought all day everyday, but you know, it happens. One thing that I didn't know wasn't normal was parenting your parent. I go to school do all my class work and during recess and lunch I listened to all the other kids talk about going to the park after school and eating dinner together with their parents. When I got home from school, I had to do my homework and then take care of my mother. Bring her things she needed such as food, water, help her with many other simple everyday activities. Of course I wasn't the only one who was her “little helper” as she put it, my dad helped her and my older brother by two years,

I haven’t been alive for too long and I’ve lived a pretty normal life though I do know of one specific event that changed me forever. On January 12 2010 I came home from school like every other kid in Haiti. It was a completely normal day. My mom was cooking in the kitchen, my aunt was holding my little sister while watching TV, my dad wasn’t home yet and I was by myself in the living room playing games on my dad’s computer. Then out of nowhere I hear a deep low loud rumbling noise. Right when I start to wonder what the noise was, the shaking starts. Being a normal eleven year old kid I just sat there in shock and fear and just watched as my whole world came crashing down around me. Paintings, vases silverware, my moms china set, they were

The loss of my younger brother changed my life in ways that I couldn't have imagined at the time of his death, but I was bombarded with so many emotions and undertakings that deeply impaired my thought process.

When people hear the word stepmom most people think of a mean, disrespectful, bitter person that is trying to take their moms place. That is not always true. When I was eight years old, my biological mother was diagnosed with a disease called multiple sclerosis. The sickness made it hard for her to take care of me and my sister all by herself, so my grandmother was there with her. When my grandmother passed away my mom was put into a nursing home, causing me and my sister to move in with my father and stepmom. While she was in there her sickness had gotten worst. In 2014, my mother passed away due to pneumonia. During this tragic, my stepmom was there by me and my sister’s side through it all. Not just then, but ever since she walked into my

After reviewing my life, I have decided my life defining moment was when my family and I moved to Texas from Oklahoma. I consider this move my life changing moment because it changed so many things in my life. This move set the stage for an entirely new life for me. Moving six hours away from the only home I knew certainly called for many changes.

I came home one day to see both of my parents sad. As a third grader, I didn’t completely understand at the time, but my father had been laid off from the job he’d had since his teenage years. My father had started at the age of eighteen as a student worker at Southern Miss, and after years of hard work he had been promoted to the manager of shipping and receiving on campus. When the recession struck, the need to save money resulted in his position being terminated. My father was without a job. My father loved that job and when he lost it, he changed. He found a new love, alcohol. He let his love for alcohol become an addiction. He would do anything for alcohol; he even had secret stashes when my mom had removed all the prior alcohol from the house. Quickly my father became a violent drunk and began to routinely beat my mother and me. He became unstoppable; no person could get him back on track so my mother, in an attempt to keep me safe, removed him from the house. Even my mother’s best efforts weren’t always enough, as my father constantly broke into our house. One day my mother and I came home and my father was waiting in our den with a gun. We walked in, he pointed the gun at us, and then back at himself. He couldn’t decide to kill my mother, himself, or just all of us. He had more hatred in his eyes

My mother was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis at the age of 40, when I was in preschool. With very few memories prior to her diagnosis, living with MS was quite simply a fact of life. A single parent who was singularly dedicated to her three daughters, my mother trudged unwaveringly through all the symptoms, complications, and limitations her disease inflicted on her. For the most part she suffered in silence, her disease progression so slow and gradual that it was nearly imperceptible to us. She was our family’s rock, her faith in God strengthening her resolve to give us as normal a childhood as possible considering the situation. A sudden escalation of her symptoms when I was eleven altered our lives. Over the course of two months she lost

There were numerous stories shared. In one instant, a person had been sober for over 12 years and found

At the age of ten, my mother told me she was leaving my father. I was not sad; in fact, the news was a relief. My sister, my mother, and I faced the aggressive side effects of my father's drug and alcohol addiction. I grew up with my dad treating my family like nothing, as if he was in constant control of us and we did not matter. At the time, I did not comprehend the divorce was because of my dad's drug and alcohol addiction. I assumed when he passed out on the couch and would not wake up it was funny. The irrational mood swings were because he was overworked. My life, my view of the world, shifted when I pieced together what addiction

It was the afternoon of my 7th birthday when it happened. We were out at our favorite park in Brooklyn, the weather was nice, and everything seemed fine, except for one thing; my father wasn’t sober. It was the first time my father had ever brought a bottle with him on one of our birthdays. I never found out what caused him to find the need to take a swig, but ever since breakfast that morning, the smell of alcohol had gotten stronger on his breath. My mother complained about it, and one thing led to another and he slapped her in the face. But instead of yelling or crying, my mother turned to Maggie and me, said she was sorry one final time, and jumped off the beautiful park bridge, falling into the rock filled river below. In that moment, I realized at once why she had kept apologizing to us; she knew that if she was ever going to escape my father’s torture, she was going to have to leave

Many people and events have influenced me greatly throughout my life. Living through the Iranian Revolution, many things happened that I learned a lot from. The new laws that came with the fall of the shah changed my life greatly. I made friends, and I lost friends. One of my favorite friends was my Uncle Anoosh, he is one of the greatest most inspiring men I have met in my life. His passing was something that made me grow up and forced me to start living with pride.

I am a completely different person now than I was back when I was 4 years old. I will do my best to make this long story short.

I have become comfortable enough at this point to disclose this information, and it doesn’t have any shock value to me anymore. Although it was true that I lived with my married biological parents, it was unknown to most that we lived with an alcoholic. My father was a hardworking man with a tough exterior, and a more tough heart. Because of this, he and my mother did not have a happy marriage. I often found myself playing with my dolls, or singing songs, to distract myself from the blow out fight erupting downstairs. My dad also had trauma induced anxiety, which made simple tasks of living impossible for him, in many ways. At a very young age, I learned to “walk on eggshells” as we call it. My mother laughs to this day when she remembers how my gentle heart used to approach him. At first, his harsh words weren’t strong enough to break my lighthearted exterior. Unfortunately, that was extremely short lived. By the time I was about five years old, I had been negatively impacted by his

Before I go deeper into the effects, I need to talk about the cause. My father was an alcoholic.Since the day I was born, the day my brother was born, hell since the day my parents met, my father had an addiction. My mother, being the saint she is, tried to look past that. Before I was born, my father had gotten clean. It seemed like life was perfect. My parents were happy, my brother was happy, everyone was happy. But it seems like that all changed when i came into the picture. My father drank heavily while I was a child. He would come home hammered, have a screaming match with my mother, which even though she won the fight, she never won the battle. I remember when I was in the 3rd grade, my father came home from another night of drinking, which came naturally to me at this point, but something was different this time. I heard the doorbell at 416 AM, and i answered it. The only image I saw was my father with blood covering every single particle of skin it could. My

As I looked up with my arms wide open asking “Uppie uppie?”..my father says “Okay EB, one last time” as he picked me up and held me, I noticed his gestures. Ever since I was young, I’ve always had the power of observing and memorizing what surrounded me. Then, it hit me. The strange characteristics my father held. His aggressive temper, the impatient OCD, the odd jokes directed at my mother, the constant blaming as if he never made mistakes. Twas the night time that I dreaded the most. His time to “shine”. His enjoyment was down in the basement watching either football or baseball and through the thin walls I could hear that snap of a beer can opening. Every single night. I was about eleven years old when I finally connected the dots. Those dots meant everything but also meant nothing. My father is an alcoholic. At this developing age, I never understood