I was born on March 22, 1995 in Castro Valley, California. The first six years of my life went quite well, at least that’s what it looks like in the pictures. When I was six or seven my father started drinking heavily, so did my mother, and I realized throughout my life that alcohol is the reason I had more agency than most kids my age ever did. Alcohol caused leeway in my household, in fact, rules were nonexistent in my household. Because sobriety was needed to carry out rules and there was not much in my household. When my older sister and I were in eighth and seventh grade our home life completely changed who she was before. She was a friendly, positive, dedicated, A-plus student. But my sister began to make poor friendship choices, she
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This caused me ask a lot of internal questions about how I wanted to be perceived by other people. I began to imagine other people’s perspective of me, I did well in school, I was very friendly, and I participated in cheer. I didn’t talk back to teachers, I didn’t mess around with any boys, and I thought to myself that people must be thinking very highly of me. I didn’t realize that this was actually Charles H. Cooley’s “The Looking Glass Self” theory or that I would continue to do this well into high school. By the time I was in eighth grade, I began spending a lot more time at my friends’ houses. This is where I saw the nuclear family. All my friends had fathers who worked and mothers who worked too, but a bit less than their husbands because they took care of household things; cooking, cleaning, tending to the children. I also noticed patriarchy in the households, my friends would ask their mothers one thing and their mothers would refer them to their fathers. One evening I went to dinner at my friends’ house. This was the first dinner I had with her family although I knew them fairly well. The mother brought the food to the table and everyone sat down, except for the mother. She began to serve the food, asking what her husband wanted first and getting
This caused me ask a lot of internal questions about how I wanted to be perceived by other people. I began to imagine other people’s perspective of me, I did well in school, I was very friendly, and I participated in cheer. I didn’t talk back to teachers, I didn’t mess around with any boys, and I thought to myself that people must be thinking very highly of me. I didn’t realize that this was actually Charles H. Cooley’s “The Looking Glass Self” theory or that I would continue to do this well into high school. By the time I was in eighth grade, I began spending a lot more time at my friends’ houses. This is where I saw the nuclear family. All my friends had fathers who worked and mothers who worked too, but a bit less than their husbands because they took care of household things; cooking, cleaning, tending to the children. I also noticed patriarchy in the households, my friends would ask their mothers one thing and their mothers would refer them to their fathers. One evening I went to dinner at my friends’ house. This was the first dinner I had with her family although I knew them fairly well. The mother brought the food to the table and everyone sat down, except for the mother. She began to serve the food, asking what her husband wanted first and getting