Human Development Final Project
Jessica Sipes
Salt Lake Community College

I was born on November 25, 1991 to Lisa and Mike Sipes. We lived in Bountiful,
UT and even though my mom and I moved around a lot I was lucky enough to stay in the area while I did most of my growing up. The reason we moved so much is because my mom and dad divorced when I was two and she stayed single for a while. When I was about four she met her second husband Brett, and while with him we moved twice. They divorced when I was eight. After that we moved to my grandma’s in North Salt Lake,
UT, and to be honest it was one of the happiest times of my life. I had my mom to myself and she didn’t seem to struggle as much financially which made her more fun to be around. She met Daniel when I was ten and we were able to move out and back into our previous house. Not long after, they were married and I had a new brother by the time I was 12. With the addition to the family, we needed a bigger house and this is where a lot of changes took place. We moved to Layton, UT and even though we were now really far my mom made the sacrifice every morning to get me to my old Jr. High in NSL. She and
Daniel divorced when I was 17 and a few months after I turned 18 we moved to
Taylorsville with her current husband, Matt.
As I mentioned, I got to stay in the same school up until 8 th
grade. Naturally I made a few close friends. The first one’s name is Aspen and she and I have been friends for as long as I can remember. Our moms went to college together and stayed friends for a very long time so Aspen and I were around each other a lot. Another prominent friend was Channing. She and I stayed friends until high school when she let rumors come between us. She shaped me in a big way because her background was the complete opposite of mine and when you’re friends with someone you each share things about

yourself that not everyone knows. From her, I learned how drugs affected families (her mom was a drug addict), what it was like to be poor and living in shelters, and how to be
“tough”. Naturally none of these lessons were 100% correct because they were coming from another child, but I was able to get the gist of the situations. For the first year after we moved to Layton I didn’t have any friends. I relied on books for company and I took up running as an after school activity. A big part of this was because the kids at Central
Davis Jr. High were edgier than I had ever been around. I never knew how different schools could be in the class population and it was a culture shock to me. It wasn’t until
9 th
grade that I met my then best friend Amanda. She helped pull me out of a very dark time, and we found we had more in common than wanting to avoid a girl named Tasha.
Later that year I met my friend Aaron, who I still see every now and again, and during that summer I met another prominent figure in my life named Brandon.
Throughout my childhood and adolescence there wasn’t a whole lot of continuity.
I wish this had been true with my dad, however his drinking was always present and still affects our relationship. He gives me a great example of social learning theory that suggests children imitate those around them, and of operant conditioning which involves rewards and punishments. For example, when he would get drunk at night he would wake me up to teach me how to fight and wouldn’t let me be done until he thought I had made progress. For me the reward was being left alone so I learned really quick how to outsmart him even though I was only 8-12 years old. The punishment came when I wasn’t quick enough and our “sessions” lasted longer. Social learning comes into play because I learned I wanted to be like my mom more than my dad so I tried to be nice to everyone.

Sometimes the attitude I displayed around my dad spilled out, but most of the time I could keep that side contained. Another thing that concerns social learning is that I learned how detrimental alcohol is to parent-child relationships, and I believe that is why even though I have strong addictive behaviors in my family, recreational drugs have no hold on me. As you can understand I learned at a young that I wanted to be better than my dad which I believe is part of what led to my obsessive-compulsive behavior. I think what started out as a desire to do better than him slowly turned into high expectations for myself that morphed into perfectionism by Jr. High and into full out OCD by high school.
My second critical event is much more sudden and final even if its effects lasted for a few years. When I was 14 years old, my aunt died; she was only 29 and they couldn’t explain what actually killed her. Because I was an adolescent, I was experiencing grief through adolescent egocentrism which caused me to believe no one could possibly understand how I was feeling even though I wasn’t the only person who lost her and certainly not the only kid to have ever lost a relative. Instead of finding relief in this though I got angry with those who tried to tell me it wasn’t as big a deal as I was making it. After a while I got sick of hearing the same thing and slowly sank into a very deep depression. This effectively disconnected me from society because I quit going to school for a whole semester and I refused to talk to any family about my feelings because
I always felt they were undermining me. I had always had problems sharing my emotions
(maybe because of all the divorces?) and then this happened and I began to internalize distress. This led to self-harm, which was thankfully caught early enough to get help. To this day I still have internalizing problems and they come out in bursts of extreme and uncontrollable emotions over the tiniest things.

The last thing I’m going to discuss shaped me a lot in the last 6 years. It was my relationship with Brandon, who I mentioned in the beginning. I met him through my
“boyfriend” (who really has a boyfriend at 14?) Aaron, and at first I couldn’t stand him. It wasn’t until Aaron and I broke up that Brandon and I even became involved. It started out innocent enough and looking back it was the best part and time of our relationship.
We started out as friends who spoke everyday for hours on end; I felt like I could tell him anything and he would understand. Within a few months however friendship progressed to attraction and that’s when things started going downhill. I found out I liked him immensely and six years later I realize it was the beginning of falling in love with him.
Because of this I wanted to do everything in my power to keep him to myself and naturally what came to mind was using sex. I was curious enough about it that when we finally fell down the slippery slope it wasn’t so much a chore as a final ending to my game plan. After this our relationship degraded and it wasn’t the only relationship I had that did so. I became alienated from my mom because what he and I were doing was a secret, which led to low self-esteem which led to even worse choices, unprotected sex for example. Because I already had self-esteem problems, when our relationship started going down the drain (it took a few years course) my choices just made it worse. Then the unthinkable happened: I got pregnant.
I was not immune to the invincibility fable of adolescence (I was 18) so when this happened my world fell apart. This is also when our relationship came to a true end. He wanted nothing to do with me and immediately went back to his old girlfriend who he had been seeing off and on while we were “together”. With self-esteem issues already at play and depression a very prominent part of my life, it’s easy to understand how I

spiraled out of control at this point. I wish I had leaned on my family more and trusted them more during all of this; it would have made the whole experience so much more durable. Instead I was isolated and alone and it wasn’t until I took a step away from the situation that I realized the things that happened weren’t entirely my fault. That realization and the fact that I still had family to support me, helped pull me out of the downward decent. Brandon and I still talk because we’ve both done some growing up and I think we both miss the friendship we had when we started out. I’ve learned that I don’t need him in my life whereas before I thought he was essential and that has eased the strain neither of us realized was in our relationship.
Today I am 21, nearly 22, and even though I still have many problems when it comes to personality and depression and such, I feel I am going in the right direction. I was able to get back into school after the fallout with Brandon ( I had dropped out when I found out I was pregnant), I’m working for the Attorney General’s office, and my relationship with my parents (my mom and stepdad Matt) is very close. All of these transformations happened in a relatively short time which only makes me feel better about myself. I’ve had many moments in the last two years where I question myself and found some unpleasant discoveries but overall I’m working toward being someone I like.
I think part of the reason I’m so much happier is I no longer have a need to please everyone around me, even if I’m still a perfectionist. In all, my life hasn’t been “easy” per se, but the paths I’ve chosen to take have gotten me where I am and for once I like where I’m at.