Personal Narrative

Theodore Evans

OGL 482: Pro-Seminar II

Professor Hess

October 25, 2020

 As a millennial, I have been fortunate to grow up during a time of incredible growth for

the human race, and have experienced more in my twenty-seven years than most did in a lifetime

a few hundred years ago. While I may still be young, I consider everything that I have gone

through to be a blessing, as each experience has helped shape me into the person that I am today

and the person that I am still becoming. One of the most important things I have taken from my

experiences up until now is that what I find so much joy in is being of service to others and

helping them in any way possible. I have discovered through hardship that the most meaningful

thing I can do in my short life is to serve others and help them with whatever they may need to

better their lives.

My name is Theodore Jared Evans but I have gone by Teddy for pretty much my entire

life because as a kid I always thought Theodore was too formal and just did not fit my

personality. I was born in April 1993 to a single mom that was pushing forty who was told not

to have kids because of some underlying kidney issues she’d had as a child. Well, as fate would

have it, my mother got pregnant with me even though she had a relatively new IUD and she

decided that this was fate and that she would see the pregnancy through. My father had

absolutely no interest in being in my life, as he did not have a good relationship with his own

father and thought that he could not be a good parent to me because he wouldn’t know how to.

As much as my mother tried to get him involved in my life, he refused, and from a young age, I

decided that if he didn’t care about me, why would I bother caring about him? I now admire the

resolve that I had as such a young kid, as I do not think many kids decide to write-off one of their

parents without a second thought as I did.

I had an incredible relationship with my mom, I was her whole world and she was mine.

I thought she could basically do no wrong, as she knew everything about the world and did
everything she could to provide for me. My mother did suffer from a genetic disease that caused

a lot of issues with her spine - she had two major surgeries on her back before she was even

thirty, both of which were not super successful. She had found a way to manage the pain for the

most part through a program at Stanford Hospital, but once her insurance stopped paying for it,

she began to experience chronic pain and was not able to continue working full-time. No longer

having a steady income, my mother and I moved in with my grandparents right before I turned

four in 1997. I was my grandparent’s only grandchild, so they were more than thrilled to have

my mother and I join them. My grandparents were both seventy years old when I was born, so at

this point, they were both in their early seventies, which presented some challenges later on, but

at the time, they did everything they could to help my mom raise me.

The next few years were pretty much smooth sailing, I started going to school, and my

mom was in relatively good health and was not experiencing too many bad side effects from her

back. This certainly changed in 2000, when my grandparents began going in and out of the

hospital six times between the two of them in just a single calendar year. Out of the six times

they went into the hospital they both experienced one particular episode where they came close

to dying, and this was the first time I really became aware of mortality. I adored my

grandparents and had become so accustomed to having them constantly in my life that I could

not possibly imagine my life without them. My mom and my aunt always did their best to

explain to me what was going on and that they would be okay but once they both were

hospitalized for the third time, even they knew that there was little that could be said that would

really change my perspective. Thankfully, neither of my grandparents died that year, however,

my grandmother was admitted to a nursing home, as my grandfather could not take care of her in

the way that she needed. As their doctor put it to my grandfather, “you’re killing both of you
faster by trying to take care of her yourself.” My grandmother was vehemently against the idea

of being put in a nursing home and this decision did put a strain on their relationship until the

day she died.

In April of 2002, not long after my ninth birthday, my grandmother passed away at the

age of seventy-eight. I clearly remember waking up late that morning realizing that I was

already late for school and I could hear my mom and my grandfather in the kitchen, my

grandfather talking to someone on the phone. I immediately knew that something was wrong

and I had a feeling I knew exactly what had happened. I walked into the kitchen after some time

and my mother told me that my grandmother had passed away sometime during the night. This

feeling of tension and distress took over on the inside, as I loved my grandmother pretty much

more than anything else, but I did not let that show on the outside. While I was sad that she was

gone, I did not outwardly show how I was feeling, as I did not understand how to process many

of the emotions I was experiencing. This would later become a pattern for me into my teenage

years, as coping with loss is not an easy thing to do, but it would later teach me how to truly

empathize with others and connect with them in a way I would not be able to otherwise.

Around the same time that my grandmother passed, I had also been moved from my local

public elementary school to a private school not too far away, as I had continuously been

complaining about how I was not being academically challenged. At the beginning of third-

grade earlier that year, my teacher ended up adopting a newborn within the first month of school,

and she was gone before we even really got to know her. We then had a long-term substitute

teacher for about two months and then were given a teacher that was right out of school in her

first year of teaching. I enjoyed her a lot but she was overly focused on trying to help the kids

that were struggling to keep up in her class and so those of us that were ready for more became
increasingly tired of going over the same material. My family then made the decision to move

me to the private school attached to our church (not that any of us went very often) and I started

there a few months before the end of third grade.

At first, I was thrilled about my transition into this new school, as I was excited to meet

new friends and learn as much as I could. As it turned out, my particular grade was even more

academically behind than my class had been in public school, and my teacher made it clear very

quickly after my arrival that the other kids needed to step things up. A majority of the class did

not take kindly to the idea of having to do more work because I had shown up out of nowhere

and I began to experience some bullying. This did not pick up too much until I started fourth

grade but as the first half of the school year went by, it only got worse. I felt so ostracized from

the other kids that I let them bully me, thinking that allowing them to do so would make them

feel better and not detest me as much as they did. I do not personally recall any of the things

they did as much of this time has been repressed in my memory, however, years later I ran into

one of the kids and she recalled a particular instance where my classmates tied me to a chain-link

fence with sweaters and hit me in the stomach repeatedly and laughed through the entire

endeavor. By December of the same year, my family could see how unhappy I was and I told

them what I had been going through and they immediately pulled me out of the school and I

never went back.

I then started being home-schooled as I could not cope with the idea of immediately

going back to school and my mother started taking me to both individual and group therapy to

try to help me cope with how I was feeling. Much of the next year and a half is a blur to me, as I

know that my family did what they could to teach me at home, but they were not the best

teachers and I was not anywhere nearly as engaged in my learning as I had been for so long.
Most of what I recall from this time was going to therapy at least two times a week and talking

about how I felt and who I was. Looking back on this time in my life now, I would say that I

was probably so dejected from everything around me that I did not feel much of anything, I was

inside a void of my emotions that I did not want to share with anyone. Repressing some of this

emotion was necessary for me at the time because I was not ready to process what I was feeling

and all I knew was that I felt deep anger for the kids that treated me so poorly. For a long time,

all I felt was anger and frustration toward the five or six particular kids that bullied me more than

anyone else, and even though I thought I had moved past those experiences, my feelings

remained. These feelings did not define me as a person but it did make it clear that I felt as if I

had been wronged and I needed to understand how to move past the experience and feel

emotionally at ease.

After about a year and a half of being by myself at home, I decided that it was time to

return to public school so that I could be around other kids again, as I had become pretty lonely.

Upon my return to public school in April 2004, I was greeted by all the same kids that I had gone

to school with since kindergarten and they were as elated to see me as I was them. I knew

immediately that I had made the right decision in going back to school and I graduated alongside

all of the kids I had known for so long. I then started middle school, which started out pretty

uneventful for the most part, as I was happy with going to school. My aunt had moved in with

the rest of my family as she had an injury that put her out of work for over a year and she could

not afford to live on her own without a steady income. I was now living with my mom, my aunt,

and my grandfather and I was more than happy to have my whole family living under the same

roof. The emotional support I received from being around so much of my family was helpful for
my own development and adding that to the friends I made in school really let me become much

more at peace with my own emotional state but that soon changed.

During the summer of 2006 my mom had discovered a significant lump in her mouth that

she let go untreated probably longer than she should have. Once she finally sought out medical

treatment, she was told that she had a malignant tumor in her mouth and that it had actually

metastasized into her lungs. She immediately began radiation and chemotherapy and spent much

of her time in bed, as all of her treatment was hard on her body. When she was first diagnosed, I

knew what cancer was, as I had seen it in movies before, but in many of those cases, the patients

turned out okay and were able to continue on with their lives. I thought that this was just going

to be a short-term process and that at the end of it my mom would be completely fine. Not long

after I started high school in 2007, my mom was placed into hospice, meaning that there was

almost a guarantee that she was going to soon pass away. When I was told this, I could not

believe what the medical professionals were telling me and I could not believe that my mother

was going to die, I just could not fathom it.

While my mother was still in the hospital, I recall going into her closet and finding a

sweater she had worn most of my life and I sat there clutching it and just crying for hours. I was

so overwhelmed with what was going on and the reality of losing my favorite person in the

whole world was absolutely devastating. I know that I did this more than once during the time

that she was still in the hospital, just crying by myself trying to come to terms with the idea that

my mom was not long for this world. She was allowed to come home at her request and she died

not long after in November 2007. The morning that she died my whole family knew that she

was about to go, so we all sat by her bedside while the nurse gave her another dose of morphine

that ultimately ended her life. I sat next to her and held her hand and cried for some
undetermined period of time until a doctor arrived to officially pronounce my mother as dead.

From this point forward, I felt particularly numb to any and all emotion and even though I was

now a teenager, I still could not handle the idea of processing death in the way that I really

needed to. I became so accustomed to just compartmentalizing my emotions and not addressing

them all at once because I thought that it was just too much to handle and I continued to do that

for the next few years.

In 2008, as part of my required hours to graduate from high school, I began volunteering

at a local YMCA, as a support to the staff leading youth programs. These programs were usually

sports-related in some fashion and I found that I quite enjoyed getting to work with younger kids

and did my best to help them learn how to work in teams and just be a good contributor to the

group. While I was only required to complete twenty hours to graduate, I did well over 200

hours at the YMCA because I so thoroughly enjoyed what I was doing, and it became a place of

solace for me. I felt so good about being able to help kids learn and give families an opportunity

to see their kids have fun and grow at the same time. It was from these experiences that I

discovered my passion for working with families in my community and have continued to do so

in many different forms throughout my entire career. Once I finished high school and turned

eighteen in 2011, I was offered a permanent position as an employee at the YMCA because they

thought I did such a great job as a volunteer. I was over the moon with the prospect of getting

paid to do something I enjoyed so much and this ultimately defined much of my career for the

next ten years.

In March of 2012, my grandfather passed away at almost ninety years old, which was

somewhat of a surprise to both my aunt and me, as he had been doing fine for the most part.

Now at the age of nineteen, I was much more capable of processing my emotions and while I
was sad to see my grandfather pass, I knew that he was going to be in a better place. He had

been relatively immobile for a number of years and was not living life to the degree that I think

he would have preferred, so it was not the worst thing for him to pass on. The recurring theme of

death in my immediate family may seem horrendous for someone that was so young but I

attribute much of who I am today to the fact that I have had to experience so much emotional

turmoil and learn to live with the concept of mortality. I would not wish what I experienced with

my family passing on anyone, but I will say that I came out a much stronger person for it at an

age where most people are only just discovering who they are as an adult.

My aunt and I continued to live together for about two and a half years after my

grandfather passed but I became increasingly ready to move out on my own as I got older.

While the two of us love each other a lot, we do not always see things from the same perspective,

so we tended to butt heads more and more as I became more of a fully-fledged adult. In

September 2014, I moved out on my own for the first time and rented an apartment with a good

friend. I felt so empowered by making this decision and actually going through with it and it

was the first time I truly felt as if I was completely responsible for my own life. I had been

privileged enough to have a family that had money up to that point but most of the money had

dried up to due all of the medical expenses everyone incurred over the years, so it was time that I

learn how to fend for myself. I felt bad about leaving my aunt on her own since she was still not

working, yet I knew that it was the best decision for me to be able to live freely and make my

own decisions as to how the rest of my life was going to proceed.

Not long after I moved out, I stopped going to school in December 2014 because I had

spent three and a half years in community college not really knowing what I wanted to do with

my life. I also needed to make myself available to work more hours because I could barely
afford the place I was living in, so even though I knew that this decision would prolong my

efforts in getting a degree, I had to do it. Then, in September 2015, my roommate moved out of

state and I could not afford to live on my own, nor did I have many options of where to live, so I

ended up living in my car for about three months. Never in my life did I think that I would have

been someone that would have to live out of my car but there I was at twenty-two years old,

sleeping in my 1997 Toyota Rav4 each and every night. While not the most comfortable

sleeping situation, I did come to appreciate everything that I had and that I was still much better

off than many other people were around the world. I had a car, a full-time job, and enough

money to pay for food and necessities, so there could have been many things that were worse

than they turned out to be. Living in my car was not an easy task at all but I was so humbled by

the experience that I look back on it and am thankful for what I went through, as it now helps me

relate to anyone going through a difficult time in their life.

I soon found myself in a secure living situation on my own, working full-time, wondering

if I was ever going to figure out how to get back to school to finish my degree. At the same time,

I got a new manager who had transferred to my YMCA from San Francisco and was eager to

prove himself to our Executive Director. My relationship with my boss soon became a negative

aspect of my job, as we never agreed on what my objectives were and his view of my job was

vastly different from my own. In the first six months that I was working for him, my aunt

became quite ill and she was in and out of the hospital for a number of months. She now lived

almost two hours away, so I had to spend every free moment I had driving myself to her and

trying to help her with things she needed to take care of. My boss was fully aware of this and

completely supportive of me at first, however, as my attention to my job started to falter in some

ways, he became much less understanding. I was doing my best to juggle my job while also
trying to tend to the needs of the only immediate family member I had left and sometimes family

just has to come first.

A few months later my manager put me on a development plan, stating that I was not

meeting the standards of my and that if I did not improve that I would be let go in ninety days.

This came as a complete shock to me, as I thought he knew that I was doing the best that I could

to manage everything I had going on, but that was not enough. I did get to the point where I was

able to balance my job more effectively, although it came at the cost of completely ignoring

much of my own personal needs. I worked under my manager for about a year and a half when I

had finally decided that I had spent enough time hating the job that I was going that I put in my

notice and left in June 2018. I had no plan of what I was going to do next, the only thing I knew

for sure was that I needed to finish my degree and I would do whatever it took to do so. Making

the decision to leave my first job was a painstaking process that took me six months to build up

the nerve to do and I am so glad that I did because it was one of the most liberating things that I

have ever done. I worked at the YMCA for seven years in numerous roles and I felt so

connected to my employees and my community that leaving seemed like I would be losing part

of myself. What I came to find was that prioritizing my own need is something I have to do in

order to best serve other people and that is a lesson I carry with me each and every day.

I soon found myself working for Starbucks and found a way to finish my degree via the

Starbucks College Achievement Program. This was a job that I had always considered trying out

in the past and had never found the time to do and I have found that I love it even more than I

would have imagined. By taking my life into my own hands and saying that I have to be my

own first priority, I have learned that I can only be the best version of myself when I care enough

about me to do what makes me uncomfortable. I made the decision to leave the job that I knew
and venture out into the rest of the world not knowing what would happen. Even though I had

no idea how my decision would unfold, I trusted that I would figure things out as l stayed true to

prioritizing my life and doing what was best for me.

As I reflect on my life as a whole, I honestly would not want to change a single thing. I

have learned how to not only process my own emotions but understand the emotions of others,

which now helps me connect with other people in a way I never would have been able to

otherwise. My emotional journey is unique and gives me the opportunity to build meaningful

relationships with people that I meet and has reinforced my drive to serve others that are in need.

I find the most meaning in my life when I help other people, and in doing so, I hope that they

learn to do the same. Having now finished this narrative, I think that I will definitely choose to

include it in my e-portfolio for others to see. I have decided to include it under my “About Me”

section, as this work really showcases who I am as a person. Sharing my personal journey may

help others better interpret their own individual experiences in a way that helps them see their

lives from a perspective they haven’t seen before. If I can change the life of one person by

having them read about my unique experiences, then I have accomplished what I want to do with

my life: help others.