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I was born in May of 1973 to Malcolm and Margerite Brewis. My dad and mom met at their place of employment; the U.S. Postal Service. My dad is 14 years older than my mom. When I was born my dad was 40 years old and my mom was 26. I was the only child until I reached the age of 6. I remember one night when my mom and I were saying my nightly bedtime prayer; I told my mom that I wanted a brother and a sister. Of course, my mom told me not to be greedy. We would receive what God gives us. Well, I prayed for a brother and a sister. Nine months later, I had a brother and a sister. Twins. Neither the doctors nor my parents knew that they were going to have twins. Two years after that my mom had another little boy. So now I was surrounded with brothers and a sister.
While I was growing up, my parents didn’t have a lot of outside family help. My dad’s family resented him because he couldn’t do the things he used to with his nephews and nieces. My mom’s family had their own set up problems, which is a separate story in itself. So, my mom and dad were left to take care of four children all by themselves. I believe they did the best they could under the circumstances. When my sister began kindergarten they found out that she had a learning disability. At that time, the twins were in the same class at school. The teacher felt that having my sister in the same classroom as my brother was hindering my brother’s ability to learn. So they placed my sister in a special school for a few years. A school dealing especially with disabled children.
At the time that the twins started elementary school, I started seventh grade at the local high school. I had always had a difficult time in school, especially in making friends. I was the shy one of the class and that made it that much more difficult to make friends. In elementary school, I had a couple of class friends, but they either moved or they made new friends, which didn’t include me. Starting high school made things worse for me. I was picked on a lot more than I was in elementary school. I had started gaining weight when I was 5-7 years old after having an operation on my bladder; so my weight was an object of kids teasing. Also, I didn’t dress the way other kids dressed. I had old hand-me-downs from families we known from the church. In my opinion, some of these clothes were just too old for me. With the clothes I did have, kids would make fun of me because I wore a pair of jeans on Monday and came back on Wednesday with the same jeans on. My parents did the best they could. To be honest, I didn’t really care that much at the time about what kind of clothes I wore. It just bothered me that I was the brunt of all jokes. High school was a big pain for me. I hated physical education because you had to dress out in shorts/sweatpants and a t-shirt and I hated for anyone to see my body.
Somehow I made it through high school. I wasn’t the best student, though. I hated to study. After high school, I went to the local junior college. At that time, I thought I wanted to be an accountant, so I started the junior college with the intention of majoring in accounting. After junior college, I transferred to a four-year university to finish my education. During the first quarter there, I discovered that accounting wasn’t right for me, so I switched to Human Resource Management. Now looking back I wished I had switched to a major in Psychology. I did extremely well at the junior college and I took my courses at the university in which I did well.
I graduated with a B.S. in Human Resource Management in June of 1996. About a month after graduating I started working at one of the branches of our local library. When I was in college, I had worked at the library as a work-study student and fell in love with it. I have always loved books so now looking back I don’t know why I didn’t major in something that would have helped me go in that direction.
I worked in two different part-time positions for about 4 years before I finally got a full-time job at the library. Around this time, my dad had to have open-heart surgery. This was a traumatic experience for my whole family and me. I shortly developed depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder after this ordeal. This was around the year of 1997. I have been under psychiatric care ever since.
I still worked at the library. I work in our computer lab where I teach computer classes to the public. I enjoy my job, although I hate public speaking. My depression and OCD continues to flare up from time to time and I have to stay on medication all the time now.
- Location:
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United States
- Primary occupation:
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Library Assistant
- Dream occupation:
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Writer
- Hometown:
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Fultondale
- Schools attended:
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Fultondale Elementary, Fultondale High, Jefferson State Community College, UAB
- I like:
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reading, writing, movies, music, candy, dt mountain dew
- Favorite writers:
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Danielle Steel, Robin Cook, Mary Higgins Clark, Tim Lahaye, Jerry Jenkins
- Favorite books:
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The Left Behind Series
- Favorite music:
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soft rock
- Favorite movies:
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action, romantic comedy
- Favorite TV shows:
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Strong Medicine, 7th Heaven
- Favorite teams:
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Alabama Football
- Gender:
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Female
- Religion:
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Baptist