We Will Overcome, We Are Resilient - Jen Ball

Where do I even begin?

This is a story about a little girl who grew up way beyond her years, far too quickly.

She was born into a world that wasn’t ready for her greatness at the time and unfortunately into parents who didn’t want her around for the right reasons.

I was born into a family who had problems before I even came into the world. My mom was an alcoholic from her young teenage years and my dad had a lot of issues with showing love and being a father due to whatever he decided was a just cause. Having a baby was not what they should have done but I was born nonetheless.

Some of my earliest memories are of being alone at the age of 2 overnight and when my mom would come home finally, I would see her get dragged out by her hair by the front door again. Don’t ask me how I even survived those nights by myself. I remember for most of my life begging for her to stop, not realizing she was actually sick, and that alcoholism is a disease, not always a choice. She had an aneurism when I was 8 and had reconstructive brain surgery after being in a coma for quite a while. Yet after all of that, she chose alcohol again.

I remember my whole life just begging for my dad to see me, notice me, love me, choose me, and yet at almost 35 years old, that still hasn’t happened. That man was never ready to be a dad or a father. I lived with my dad when my mom had her accident and that part of my life is the darkest to me, it’s where I was in the worst place mentally that I have ever been. At 16 I finally had to leave if I wanted to survive the hell I was in.

It took me almost my whole life to realize the problem was never me. It was the people I was surrounded by that were the problem.