Hello,

I’ve decided I can have my cake and eat it too, at least when it comes to writing. I’m going to do the Pennebaker Protocol. 15 minute writing sessions, 4 of them. 4 days in a row. About the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.

NOW.

This is probably the worst thing that’s ever happened to me, but it’s all about perspective so it’s hard to say. My 15 minutes hasn’t started yet, I thought I’d take a moment to let the pipes warm up, and explain a bit about what this is.

This protocol is supposed to help me according to 200 peer reviewed studies. I’ll be writing about something that changed the course of my life, I don’t know if that was for the better or for worse and I won’t know until my dying day. I’m writing about my parents doing drugs when I was a kid, and how I got here to some degree. There will be mention of drugs, illegal activity, mental health, death, you name it. This is not really a story for the faint of heart. Viewer discretion is advised. Here we do.

When I was around 7 years old my parents became addicted to prescription pain pills. At the time I didn’t know that, but it took me a very short time to figure it out. I have 4 siblings. 2 brothers 2 sisters, they’re all older. Growing up was weird, my dad was always angry and my mom was always sleepy. To be honest I don’t really remember my mom going out with us or doing anything with us as kids, my dad would though, take us golfing, fishing, dad shit. It wasn’t til I was an adult and began to look back that I realized my mom had terrible depression. The first 6 or so years were great. Mom was a stay at home parent, dad was blue collar, but he was great at what he did so he made pretty good money, especially for the time, we’re talking 2000ish at the moment. Single family home, ranch style, bunk beds for me and my brother, and honestly, the house wasn’t big enough for all my siblings, which worked out for my parents because they neglected the shit out of two of my siblings especially. Both of those siblings went on to have tough lives, become drug addicts, go to jail etc. This isn’t about them this is about me. At age 5 my dad got me a dirt bike and it was the coolest thing in the world. By age 6 repo agents were coming to the house looking for said dirt bike. At the time I didn’t understand why, or that it meant my dad had stopped paying the bills. Not long after that we had a very small house fire, it destroyed the living room but really nothing else. The living room was quickly half put back together, well enough to live in but not well enough to be cozy. At this point Realtors started coming around, my parents were selling the house and I didn’t understand why. Keep in mind I’m the youngest by 5 years. Eventually we discover or I discover that my parents are selling the house because they are behind on the mortgage, I didn’t understand how that could be the case, but whatever theyre selling the house. When they sold the house we moved into an apartment by revere beach, they really tried to upsell this by allowing me and my brother to pick any paint color for our room(the fucking landlord was a painter mind you) we picked red. Deep deep red. Idiots we were, we are both colour blind. Anyways the first few months in this apartment aren’t terrible, there’s some cool kids in the neighborhood, we play a lot of stick ball, and a guy with one hand lives next door and he can throw a football with his nub. After a few months my dad lost his job, he claims he was laid off for giving a guy a ride to work, I’m sure work figured out the drug situation, but I may never know. To keep you up date in time we are currently in 3rd grade. roughly 2003???? My parents are falling behind on the rent and eventually we get evicted, at this point my sister moves in with her boyfriend at his parents house, and my brother and I move to my uncles house, with my parents. This is where shit gets bad. For the year of fourth grade we lived at my uncles house, and my parents bed was in his unfinished basement, along with mine. One night after a shower I was playing with a toy car, match box cars, I fucking loved them I had like 200, anyways one slid under my parents dresser and when I stuck my big head under there to find it I saw a plate, so I pulled the plate out. On the plate was two straws, and crushed up pills, I didn’t know what they were but I knew two things, if my parents caught me I was in trouble, and if I touched whatever was on that plate, I was probably dead. I slid it back like nothing happened. After a few months we had to move again, my parents had been stealing from my uncle, onto my aunts house, where we’d live shortly, again, because my parents were stealing from her. Things were bad at my aunts, I remember one night me and my mom were driving in a car with no license and no registration. We got pulled over and taken back to my aunts house, they were hoping to arrest my dad as they had evidence of him committing some crimes involving copper, typical fucking heroin addict. The only reason neither of my parents went to jail that night was me, when I was sitting in the back of the cop car talking to the detective, he realized, I was pretty smart, and without parents I’d be fucked, so he let my dad go on the condition of get your shit together you have a smart kid there. So now we are out of my aunts house and staying at my sisters grandmothers house. Ladies and gentleman, this is where shit gets bad, that’s right, what you’ve read so far, is not the bad, This is an old house in oak island revere, right by Kellys on the beach. This house was gross, and had more cockroaches than I could ever begin to explain to you, truly you’ll never understand. We have reached 5th grade, teachers are beginning to see I have family problems at home, we no longer have a car, fucking obviously, we actually don’t have a pot to piss in either. So to get to school every day it was one of two things. My dad would walk me, or ride bikes with me. At this point my dad is a full blown criminal. He is robbing 6 houses a week(he said sundays were bad luck). Well one day we are riding bikes to school and he sees a house he wants to rob, he told me to keep going and he’d see me after school. In 5th grade I rode my bike from Kellys on the beach to the AC Whelan elementary school, on the total other side of the city, alone, so my dad could steal someones shit. They thought I didn’t know, but I knew more than they ever will. As time went on things only got worse, and thinking now when I was a kid around this time, any time I was with my dad and he was doing something illegal, I’d get what I called a nervous stomach, aka I had to go to the bathroom. I didn’t know til recently, that was actually my fight or flight activating, I was having anxiety, and panic, because I was not safe. I remember one day my dad robbed a house and while he was robbing it, the guy who owned it came home, my dad tackled the guy and ran, but the guy called the cops, so there’s cops and helicopters fucking everywhere, k-9s all of it, all looking for my dad. My dad got home changed clothes grabbed me and we started walking, this paranoid idiot was ducking under trees and shit when the helicopter flew by, when the cops stopped him he said him and my mom got in a fight and he was trying to catch up to her, she was at wonderland train station waiting for us, the idiot cop believed him. We went to wonderland and got the train to Boston. My dad sold a whole gang of jewelry he stole from the house and got a hotel with a pool for the night to make it up to me. This asshole, what am I gonna do with a pool, I can’t swim, and you’re shooting heroin in the bathroom. That same day my dad bought me one of those ship in a bottle kits where you build the ship, I saw the movie national treasure in school and wanted so badly to get one because it reminded me of the movie. That night he thought the cops were following him and made me hide in a bush with him, when we got back to the hotel we realized we lost the ship and bottle, I was pretty bummed. 6th grade is where my parents became homeless, I was going to school at rumney marsh academy, which was actually just the beachmont middle school while they built the real RMA. I took the bus to school, and didn’t see my parents much, at this point I was living back at my uncles and my sister was in the process of adopting me. While homeless my dad ended up in prison for robbing a house and stealing a cop car…. in front of me…. I saw the whole fucking thing I was with him and my mom. To be fair he said robbing houses on sundays was bad luck and this was his first time doing it and last time. The cops beat the shit out of him, his mug shot is eyes were swollen shut, they figured out he was the guy they’d been after all this time and he deserved his ass kicked. My dad went to jail and my mom was in a shelter, my mom was still on drugs. my dad would write me letters that I didn’t respond to for a long time, I was pissed at that fucking guy. Eventually I started writing back. He was full of remorse and regret. Around this time my sister adopted me, and I moved to Saugus, I spent the summer between 6th and 7th grade completely alone, in a house in Saugus, I had no friends in Saugus cause I hadn’t gone to school there yet, and no way to revere because my sister was working and so was her husband at the time, they had to time to drive me around. I played a lot of call of duty. My parents were clean but still homeless. Eventually after being homeless long enough my dad developed some weird foot infection and ended up walking with a cane, he got on social security and they gave him enough money to get an apartment, he got one in Lynn with my mom, they showed me on Christmas. They still live there today, and I hate it there because of the memories.

I went way over 15 minutes.

See you for the same story tomorrow, though I’m sure I’ll remember different parts and tell it differently.

Where the skies are gold not gray,

J.

PS if you read this don’t feel sorry for me, or anyone in this story, it probably made me a better person.