My Life and My Experiences
Melina Jennings
ENGL 1100.47

I don’t love to read and write unless it is interesting to me. Most of my family members have a love for reading and writing. My granny loves to read, and my grandfather writes a little poetry. There are many ways I have come to deal with the differences. For example, I listen to a lot of songs and the lyrics, I listen to others’ explanations of what they read, interpret, or have written, and I have had personal experiences.

One of the things that have really influenced me is my personal experiences. My mother was always like the outcast of the family, and when she got pregnant with me at a young age, it was hard for her family to deal with because they are all religious people. Having a child out of marriage was looked down upon. In her situation, her grandmother never gave up on her just like my granny never had and never will give up on me. My mother had me when she was sixteen, had to quit school, work two jobs by herself because my father never really cared about me. So, there was never really no time for my mother and me to develop a relationship. It was always my granny and me. She taught me before I went to school and she helped me with my reading and writing, but, she didn’t pass on her love for reading and writing to me. I think that’s why now I am not very open and expressive with my writing. Because when I was younger I was never good enough, my grades were never good enough, and all my choices were wrong, according to my mother. That’s why now when I get upset, angry, or anything, I write about it in my journal or I write poetry.

In my journal, I write down things when I am upset, just like my thoughts. Sometimes it is in complete sentences and paragraph form, but sometimes it is in sentence fragments. I use this as a good way to vent out my frustration, make me feel better, and to ease my mind about whatever it is without upsetting or hurting someone’s feelings. With my poetry, I write when I feel the urge, but mostly my poems are about my life, how I feel about someone or something, or how I feel about the decisions someone makes, or my experiences with things like relationships and crushes. My poems are sometimes long and sometimes they are short, depending on how much I want to talk about and say. With my poems and my journal writings I can write exactly how I feel and not worry about if it is going to upset somebody or hurt their feelings or anything. I love to write them because there is really nothing expected of me and not a set subject that I have to write about. With school and academic writing and reading, I hated it because we were always expected to write about stupid things and things that didn’t interest me, also things that I didn’t care about and things that didn’t affect me.

In my life, I have only had one biological parent because my dad was never there until about a year or two ago. When I was born, he was called and told all about me, but he just never acted like he cared. Then, about the time I turned fifteen, he called me, wrote me, and all of a sudden wanted to be a part of my life. And he called and kept in touch until about two years later and I haven’t heard from him since then. I wrote this poem was because I had a lot of emotions and feelings I wanted to get out for my father to know:

Daddy
The one who was never a part of my younger years,
The one my mother never wanted me to ask about,
The one person all my friends had but me,
Yes my mother loved me enough for both parents,
But that was not the same.
Because I didn’t have the father to teach me to fish or hunt,
Or the father to work on cars with.
But all things happen for a reason and whatever the reason,
I have one now and you know what,
He has the biggest heart and I love him to death,
My favorite and number one dad of all! "Jeff"

By the way, I sent him a copy of this in the mail. I wasn’t trying to make him feel guilty for not being there with the line, "The one who was never a part of my younger years." Growing up, I was looked at funny when I would ask my mother about my father, I guess because she held a grudge against him for not helping her with me, and denying me, or not even trying to be a part of my life. There are a lot of things I did not have a chance to do, and he did not even try to let me know that he loves me, like calling me to let me know who he is and to let me know he loves me and cares about me. The line, "The one person all my friends had but me," was like me saying that I felt bad because all my friends had fathers to go hunting or fishing with, or to just work on cars and learn a little auto mechanics with, and I never had that companion. It was hard for me to deal with because everyone would ask me about him or what I did over the weekend, just any questions all the time, and I really did not know what to say to them because the only person I had was my mother.

It made me really happy when my father finally wanted to be a part of my life because it was like I was finally complete, like everybody else, and I was not seen as someone different from everybody else. Then he was there for a while and he just up and left. That just really upset me because he quit calling and coming to see me. It made me, in a way, feel like I did something wrong because he never called to let me know why he just up and left. We talk now, but he still acts like he did nothing wrong and that everything should be okay, but it is going to be hard to fix that void and resentment in my heart. All the end of the poem really says is that even through what he did in the past, I know he loves me today and always will.

Another thing that really has influenced me is song lyrics. A really good song to me is Green Day’s "Wake Me Up When September Ends." Green Day is a rock band that does not care what anyone thinks of them or their style of music. They will write and record songs about anything, no matter what it says or who they offend. I like their song because the lyrics of their songs relate to all situations and they help me deal with situations, good or bad. The way I was introduced to Green Day was my through my best friend, Buddy. We have been friends for years. We were hanging out one day, and he put the Green Day CD in, and I fell in love with the song and the group. I fell in love with Green Day because I could just relate to everything they were singing about.

Here are my favorite parts of the lyrics of "Wake Me Up When September Ends":

Summer has come and passed
The innocent can never last
Wake me up when September ends
Like my fathers come to pass
Seven years has gone so fast...

Here comes the rain again
Falling from the stars
Drenched in my pain again
Becoming who we are
As my memory rest
But never forgets what I lost…

Ring out the bells again
Like we did when spring began…

Like my fathers come to pass
Twenty years had gone so fast
Wake me up when September ends.

The reason this song relates to me is because my uncle Billy and I are close. I am really close with my aunts and uncles because there was really no one else there to interact with me when I was younger and they also helped take care of me. They fed me, changed me, and so on. It is like they were my mother and father because they treated me like their own kid. But lately, he has been talking about going into the Army. I mean, we have our days when we do not want to be around each other or talk to each other, but through it all, we love each other dearly. I do not want him to go into the Army because I will miss him too much. This song helped me come to terms with the idea a little more because he will be defending our country and freedom.

I still do not like the idea that much because I hear of so many people being wounded or killed over there and I do not want to add my uncle to that list of people. I just do not think I could deal with him being shot and killed. Having to bury him, and look at his kids (my two cousins) everyday, and live with it would be the hardest parts of it all to me because they look just like my uncle, and having to see them would help, but it would also hurt, too. The lyric, "The innocent can never last….," makes me think about my uncle getting shot and killed. "Here comes the rain again….," makes me think about us grieving his death or him getting wounded and him having to come home and live with it for the rest of his life. "Seven years has gone so fast…Twenty years have gone so fast…." makes me think of all the years he will be gone, leaving me with no uncle, but more importantly leaving his children with no father, and that those could be the years it takes us to get over his death.

My granny reads books, like romance novels, The Holy Bible, historical novels, and her school books. She hates the television, and she says, "Too much television can rot your brain. More reading and less television makes you more intelligent". My granny also says that she has a love affair with words and that reading takes her places that she cannot go any other way. And by the way, my granny is a senior at North Carolina Wesleyan College. She is set to major in religion and minor in psychology and history. My grandfather writes poetry for fun. He does not write all the time, just when he gets something on his brain or when he gets the urge. He writes for inspiration, like it just makes him feel good. He wrote a poem called "Our Advisor" that was published in a book of poems in 2000, in a book called Chorus of the Soul. The poem was about a relationship with God, like having someone to talk too and things like that.