My life so far

         My name is James Jones. I am writing this because I feel I need to share the issues and trials I have been through.



  I lived in Muncie Indiana for years before moving down to Fort Myers to be near my grandparents after being tormented by my fathers step family. I have memories of laughter coming from the attic and seeing what appears to be coffins in the closet and having nightmares about this. I have been told that this was caused by my fathers step family and my mother had found a audio recorder in the attic after hearing voices of young children in a house without young children in it.

   My brother was born after my mother had her tubes tied and cauterized. When he was born my fathers step family would not even take my mother to the hospital. Her water broke as she walked to the hospital miles away. My father was working doing roof and sheet metal work when this was going on. She made it to the hospital and gave birth to my brother Joshua. I remember the winters in Indiana and how cold it got. I remember that it got so cold near the walls and outlets you could see the frost forming around the outlets and the cold wind blowing through it our house was not a very new place by any stretch of the word. I remember at age 5-9 walking almost every day in snow up to my knees lugging a 2 gallon gas can to go get kerosene from the local convenient store 5 blocks away. I had to do this to literally to save the life of my mother and young brother. My father was working full time jobs just to keep the little we had.

   We came down to Fort Myers and were around my grandparents that were great. My Grandfather Norman was a great man. He was a marine and worked on the first nuclear sub. I remember the stories he told me of when he was in the pacific and the things that he did in his life. He was not a Christian and never claimed to be. He had trench foot from his years of service he also had pieces of shrapnel still left in his body from being in an attack. He did not hold any resentment and did not blame anyone for the things that happened to him. He was a very stand up man and was very honest. I admired him he passed away when I was 15-16 I wish I could have spent more time with him and learned so much more from him. My grandmothers name was Dorthy and she was always very nice and expected to be treated with the same respect. They always cooked great meals and taught me manners and how to be respectful. I will always remember when sitting at the kitchen table and getting my elbow poked with a fork if it was put on the table as that was bad manners. They both passed away by the time I was 22 and that was a ruff time for my whole family when my grandmother died.

     My mother passed away about a year after my grandmother passed. My mother was always never really a parent she was always the "cool" mom and her and my father both smoked marijuana I never really had an issue with this it was not the marijuana that caused the most problems for me. It was that my mother was an alcoholic and she was abusive bother verbally and mentally. I know people think that they understand but they do not. Our house did not have doors on hinges not because we could not afford them but because once my mother got drunk she would storm through the house and rip them off the hinges. She was bipolar and it seamed that it came out more when she was drinking. One moment she would be crying uncontrollably the next she would be storming through the house throwing things or ripping things apart. I remember when she drank it was very hard to sleep I remember waking up being hit. I remember riding home with her and telling her she was to drunk to drive and getting punched in the face splitting my lip. She was my mother and this is her legacy not mine.

  My father Virgil was always a hard worker. He worked for what we had and never seamed to catch a break. He was in the Navy and left the Navy once I was born. He then worked for jobs finally settling down and doing AC work. He worked doing AC for years and years. He got injured and it was hard for him with his back condition to do any real work. He tried to get jobs but because of his preexisting condition companies did not want him working for them because of liability reasons. He was never very book smart and never could really learn anything with computers or typing and things of this sort to suit the type of work he was physically capable of doing. He applied for disability because his doctors took a look at him and told him he could not do anything when it comes to lifting because one of his vertebrae in his spine was touching against the spinal cord in his neck the disability claim was denied because he was not paralyzed yet and could still do light jobs at the age of 54 it is hard for an older person to find a job when all they did there whole life was manual labor. When my mother died both he and my brother took it hard.


       I was there for them during this process and I paid the electric and cable and also the insurance as well as provided them money for gas as well as cigarettes. This was hard to do on my only income. It started to get worse my father was prescribed pain pills and and it was in effect making him lose weight he did not want to eat just pop pills. He did not have insurance and turned to selling some of his pills just to pay for the DR appt just to get his prescriptions filled this left him without his meds near the end of the month he started hanging out with the wrong group of people and actually got addicted to Meth of all things. This is when things started to get bad. Me and my girlfriend were living at my dads home at this time to try and get my father and brother back to normal and try and recover any type of family I could.

     This just made my life a living hell. My brother was living in the front of the property in a small rv/camper. He was dating a literal prostitute I found out she was actually bringing Johns to the camper and sleeping with them/ripping them off. I one day came out there to give my brother some food I just cooked for everyone to find her shooting drugs into her leg that was the last straw for that. I called the police and they came out and provided her a trespass warning for being on the property. This did not seam to solve the issues. Weeks later at 3 am my brother comes to my part of the property to my RV and is screaming that someone is out to get him and is coming for him. I grab my pistol as no one is supposed to be on the property and I go outside and someone is approaching me with a tazer in there hand sparking as they come at me. I discharged my gun next to them missing them on purpose at which time they left as fast as they could. I had to contact the police and they informed me that I did the right thing but told me if I was in fear for my life I should have shot to kill them and I would have been in the right doing so.

     This broke the camel's back when it came to me and law enforcement a police officer telling me that I should have taken someones life just because I could have. I for the next week after this I slept on the other side of the bed just to be sure if there was any retribution for me coming out there with my pistol and shooting next to someone to scare them away I would be the one to take the bullets and not my girlfriend this is something that a rational person should not have to worry about. My father started getting more and more into meth at this time and he started to lose track of reality. He started to become paranoid and me with my lack of knowledge of the drugs did not see what was going on. One night he was fighting with my brother and from what the police say he came at a police officer with a bat. I was working at this time and outside of my camper I hear screaming and someone yelling get on the ground. I was afraid this was the retribution I had been waiting for. I came out of my camper with my gun drawn and my maglight in hand. When I opened my door I found myself pointing a loaded gun cocked and ready to fire directly in the face of a police officer with his gun drawn doing the same to me. He got away from the police and all that night the police had the helecopter over my home while I was trying to work from home. This needless to say caused me to call out for the rest of the night. He was eventually caught and spent 30+ days in jail this was near Thanksgiving and Christmas great time there.

  He got out and was on probation and I was paying all the bills and now also had his probation to pay as well since he was still not employed. Things seamed to start sort of moving back to normal then came him hanging out with the wrong people again and I caught him with packages of antihistamine tablets boxes of it empty at this point I confronted him and he said up and down they were from before and I had nothing to worry about. Family has a way of  blinding you and changing your thought pattern. I let it slide thinking he might be telling the truth. The next month or so was pretty much me avoiding talking to my father and my brother was already in jail for violation of probation. I could tell the changes that were happening with my father because of his drug use. One day some drugged out lady came to my door and was banging on the door. She asked where the "Clear" was I had no idea what she was talking about and I told her I did not know what she was talking about. She had a fit thinking I was misleading her. My father came home at this time and she went up to the front of the house and started talking to him. I googled clear and it came up to being meth. My father was one that said he would never lie to me and had said that was his greatest virtue.

   I then moved out and took my girlfriend with me. We are no longer in the area and I do not want anything to do with my father or brother or the land I once called home. It is so hard not to want to speak with someone that is family but it was so past where anyone else I know would have been. I am lucky to have friends that I call family that helped me escape from that place.

   I am not writing this for pity or for anyone to feel sorry for me. I am writing this because this is my life and it shows what brought me to this point and if I can make something of my life then anyone can. Thank you.