#aboutlouisa

Louisa Jenkins was born and raised in New York City. Growing up, Louisa didn’t have the most wonderful life. Her father was in the military and very strict. The man had high standards for his family and discipline always came first to him. Louisa’s mother did what her husband wanted and had adapted her life to his preferences, just like Louisa and her older siblings. Louisa’s father always punished his children by hitting them with a belt or something else that would hurt whenever he found that they had broken the rules or didn’t listen to his demands. It started when the young girl was eight years old and it seemed to never end. Even if Louisa would get bad grades in school, her body had to pay the price. By the time Louisa was a teenager, she’d run away from home multiple times, but since she was a minor, the police always brought her back and then her dad would punish her again, repeating the same patterns. One would think that the poor girl would have grown used to it, but she never did. More often than not, Louisa had nightmares about her father, but that was something she kept to herself. She never spoke of it to anyone, mostly because she was ashamed and she didn’t want people to know what was happening. However, Louisa had so much pent up anger and resentment that she was gradually changing. She was spending more time alone, grew quieter, and closed herself off from the world. When her father was stationed elsewhere and the family had to move, Louisa had to switch schools again at age sixteen. It was the night before the move that her parents got into a horrible fight, which ended with Imogen’s father killing her mother. He had apparently caught the woman cheating with a colleague and confronted her with the proof that night. Angry as he was, he wanted to make the woman pay for being unfaithful to him. Louisa was so shocked by the sight of her father shooting her mother that she grabbed a knife, the anger she felt coming out when her eyes fell upon her mother’s lifeless body. She didn’t mean to stab her father to death, she’d just wanted him to stop hurting people and she just wanted things to go back to normal. Louisa’s older brother swore her to silence and took the blame for the whole thing, confessed that he was the one who had killed their father after seeing him kill their mother. Louisa was overcome with guilt for this but her sister and brother had been adamant this was the right choice. Louisa’s brother didn’t want his youngest sister to spend the rest of her life in prison - he’d already been inside for theft and felt he could handle it. After that, Louisa started skipping school, hanging out with the wrong crowd and drinking, shoplifting, and generally acting out. She dropped out of school eventually, not seeing the point in graduating at all. Her sister acted as guardian until Louisa was old enough to look after herself. Louisa and her sister moved away to Sandpoint, Michigan a few years later, looking for a fresh start but Louisa was still haunted by ghosts from her past and she probably always will be until she finds a way to face up or move forward.