Post by Jennessa Santiago on Nov 14, 2013 12:19:13 GMT -8
| [atrb=border,0,true][atrb=style, width: 400px; height: 380px; background-image:URL(http://i800.photobucket.com/albums/yy284/brooklynlolli/x0r3w0.png); border-left: 10px solid #1e1e1e; border-right: 10px solid #1e1e1e;] JENNESSA A. SANTIAGO  JENNESSA SANTIAGO | 19| THEATER | FRAT/LEAVE BLANK ------------------------------------------------- WELCOME, TAKE A SEAT. START OFF WITH YOUR NAME, HOW OLD ARE YOU? *smirks* Take a seat? Take it where? Why the hell would I want to take a seat? What would I do with it? I'll have a seat, but you can keep it after the interview is done if it's all the same to you. You just want to get right down to business huh? A real take charge kind of woman... *winks* I like that. Let's get to it then. My name is Jennessa Santiago and I'm nineteen. I wouldn't get too attached to me though hot stuff. I don't plan on being here long. ------------------------------------------------- AWESOME. ARE YOU A LOCAL? My family is Cuban American so I guess you can say that I'm not local. My parents as most do moved here for better opportunities for their family. I was still quite young when we left Cuba, too young in fact to really remember much of my homeland at all, but my sisters were born and raised in Arizona. When I was 17 my mom married my stepdad and when his job transferred him to California, we moved as well. ------------------------------------------------- NEVER WOULD HAVE GUESSED. GOT A BIG FAMILY? I'M AN ONLY CHILD. My family is big enough I guess. There's me, my mother, my stedad, and my two sisters. I suppose technically I should make mention of my mother's sperm donor, but I really stopped considering him family years ago. I really don't even consider my step dad family either for that matter. I don't have a relationship with either of my parents. The only family I care about is my little sisters. My parents and their spouses can pretty much go f*** themselves. After my father left, me, Jaelle and Jocelyn were all each other had and it's been that way ever since. The three of us have always looked out for each other and protected each other. I won't say that we always did the right thing, but whatever we did, it was in effort to stay together. I can't say that I'm closer to one of my sisters than I am the other as I love them both equally. They each have traits that I find endearing and I will protect them at all costs. ------------------------------------------------- GO FIGURE. DO YOU THINK YOUR FAMILY SHAPE WHO YOU ARE AS A PERSON? I am fairly certain that my parents' shaped me in more negative ways than positive ways. Well, let me just be frank. They f***ed me up. My father gave me all manner of trust and abandonment issues when he walked out on us. I'm pretty sure that's where my trust issues with men originated from. Leaning on me more to help with my sibling after my dad took off, forced me to grow up faster than I would have liked and to be honest I've always hated her for stealing my childhood in that way. To this day I still haven't forgiven her. If it wasn't for my sisters I honestly don't know where I'd be. They kept me grounded when I felt ready to go off the deep end. I can't count how many times they kept me from doing something stupid or crazy. I guess it's because I knew what kind of life they would have if I were to have been sent off and they were left alone with our mother. In a way they gave me a sense of purpose, now without that sense of a purpose I...I guess I'm kind of lost. I really don't trust my stepfather at all and it makes me sick to my stomach to think of him raising my sisters. I am often frustrated by the helplessness that I feel in that regard. ------------------------------------------------- THATS DEEP, MAN. YOU SEEM PRETTY INTERESTING, YOU MUST HAVE AN INTERESTING BACK STORY, HM? Like I said before my parents moved from Cuba when I was about 18 months old. My parents couldn't speak good English when they got here, so the job opportunities weren't all that great for them. My father was pretty much reduced to day labor jobs such as construction work and truck driving jobs.My mother stayed at home with me while my father went out to work. Due to her lack of interaction with native English speakers it wasn't really until I went to school and learned English that she picked up the language as I taught her what I was taught at school. Many times I would translate for her as I got older when people called the house or knocked on the door. As my father's English improved, more opportunities opened to him and that's when my sisters came along. While my mother was perfectly content with her role as a stay at home mom, my father was growing more and more discontent with her. He became irritable, disrespectful, and for the most part just mean towards her. To my mother's credit she did try to work on her marriage, but he seemed disinterested in any efforts to reconcile. I think deep down my mother knew that there was someone else, but could never bring herself to confront him on it out of fear that she'd be proved right. The more successful he became, the more distant he became and one night a few months after my tenth birthday he didn't come home. It would be several months before he officially served my mother with divorce papers. Unlike him, my mother's English was still limited making it difficult for her to find a good job that would help her support her family. However, for the first few months after his departure she didn't even bother to try. I guess maybe she was just numb to everything. I had always respected and admired my mother, but when he left her, she suddenly became so weak in my eyes that I was disgusted by her. It was like she had fallen into some sort of trance. Completely oblivious to the fact that she still had three small people who were depending on her to take care of them, my mother would spend whole days in bed until prompted out by one of my sisters asking her for food. Even when she did arise her motions were robotic and there was this dead look in her eye. No longer trusting her to provide for us, it soon became my job to get my little sisters up in time for school and make sure that they had breakfast before they left the house. For a little while, I managed to sneak a few bills out of my mother's purse to give them so that they could buy lunch at school. However, when money became scarce I'd have to get up even earlier to make lunch. In the divorce settlement, my mother was awarded a hefty sum of money in the form of both alimony and child support and now that everything was finalized I had foolishly hoped that things would go back to normal, but I couldn't have been more wrong. Seeing his mistress at his side during the trial only sent my mother into a downward spiral. She began to drink heavily shortly thereafter and soon became entirely useless. Through careful observation, I had learned when my mother received a check from my father as she'd often rush straight out to cash it and buy more booze. At night when she was passed out on the couch, I'd sneak cash from her wallet to buy us food with. I was terrified that my sisters and I would be separated if social services got wind of my mother's predicament, so we made a vow never to let anyone in on it. I saw to it that we were were fed, and groomed properly even if we had to wash up in a public bathroom, but by this time I was only 11 and could only do so much. What I had no control over was my mother's ability to pay the bills which she seemed wholly unconcerned with. When the power was cut off during a particularly harsh winter and my baby sister Jaelle became ill was when things took a turn for the worse. She had contracted pneumonia and try as we might, Jocelyn and I weren't equipped to nurse her back to health from an illness of that magnitude. We took turns staying home from school to care for her in an effort to not draw too much notice from the school officials, but that effort failed and our absences became enough of an issue for a call to be put in. Of course the fact that when Jocelyn and I did show up to school we were both exhausted and starting to show signs of illness ourselves didn't help matters much. It only took one visit to our home for the social worker to determine that our living conditions were unsuitable. We were taken from our mother and Jaelle was admitted to a hospital. After we were all well, we were sent to our first foster family. Despite being told how difficult it would be to find a family willing to keep all of us, we refused to be separated and any attempt to do so was often met with violence on our part. Our first foster family while not openly unkind to us seemed more interested in the check that they got for us then our actual well being so we didn't last long there. I was thirteen when we moved in with our second foster family and it was there that my life was most drastically changed. My foster mother was extremely kind and we adored her, but her husband had been laid off making her the breadwinner for the family so we didn't see much of her. Her husband we weren't fond of as he was a very controlling and ill tempered man. Taking us in to him seemed to mean that he somehow owned us and he was very particular about everything we did from cooking to cleaning. Jaelle, for some reason annoyed him the most as she never got things clean enough to satisfy him. Usually, though he'd just yell at her which though I didn't like very much I could tolerate. She was always the more sensitive one out of the three of us. One day however, he was in a particularly foul mood and when she protested that she had washed the dishes in the dishwasher and couldn't help the streaks, he struck her. I still can't really explain what happened that day because I....I think I blacked out or something. I heard my sister cry out and I...I just snapped. He hadn't just hit her once, he just kept hitting her and she was crying. I don't know where the scissors came from, I don't remember where I picked them up and I have a very vague memory of the scuffle that resulted in me jabbing them into his leg. The only true point of clarity was being led away in handcuffs. I was sent to juvie for two years and didn't see my sisters again until I was 15. On the day that I was to be released, I was informed that I wasn't to be released back into the foster system, but into my mother's custody. Apparently, she'd been in rehab and was now doing well for herself. Well, well enough to convince a judge that she could care for her children again. The only problem as I saw it was that we were no longer children and frankly I no longer needed her. A point that I made clear to her from the day that I crossed her threshold. Living with her again was an adjustment for us all as to my sisters I had become 'mom' and with me being the mother, they weren't really sure what to make of our biological mother. The layer of trust between mother and child had been shattered and would take years to rebuild. There was now a new man in my mother's life and consequently now in our lives. I had even less interest in him than I had in her. He went out of his way to be nice to us and honestly I didn't trust him. There was something off about him and I really didn't like the way that he looked at Jocelyn and Jaelle sometimes. Not that I expected my mother to care if I bought this to her attention, thus I just kept as close of an eye on him as possible. They married when I was 17 and a few months later his job transferred him to California. Unlike our father who simply made enough money for us to live comfortably, this man was fabulously wealthy. He bore no shame in flaunting it either, seeking to buy my sisters' affections with extravagant gifts. I wasn't quite so easily impressed. I finished high school in Beverly Hills, but had no intention originally of going to college, even though I had taken a shine to theater when I spent time in the high school's drama club. My stepfather stated he'd spare no expense on my education, but I saw the offer for what it was... an attempt to get rid of me. I'd never bothered to hide my contempt for him and my sisters tended to fall in line with what I decided. My mother of course sided with him, so off to college I went. I don't know honestly what frightens me the most. The thought that he will turn my sisters into spoiled princesses with no appreciation for the value of hard work or that my suspicions about him were right and he will do something awful to them with me not being there to protect him. I don't think I'd ever forgive myself if something happens to them. ------------------------------------------------- MAYBE I SHOULDN'T HAVE ASKED. ANYWAY, THATS IT. THANKS FOR YOUR TIME. It's a little late to be regretting that question now, don't you think dollface? I wouldn't worry too much about it now. What's done is done. If we're done here,I've got places to see and people to do. ------------------------------------------------- THE PERSON BEHIND THIS WONDERFUL CHARACTER IS GENERALLY CALLED Kaya AND SITS AT 33. SHE LIVES IN THE EST TIMEZONE. ALSO, THIS CHARACTER LOOKS PRETTY SIMILAR TO Christina Milian, DON'T YOU THINK? |
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