• virginia "ginny" eden tierney was born in topeka, kansas july 6, 1988 to anne marie tierney and zachary barrett. the couple, deciding to stay together after anne marie found out about the pregnancy, chose to never marry because they knew they were nowhere near as committed to each other as they should be for that situation. sure, they obviously liked each other, close to the point of love, but they were young, barely out of high school and they felt it was definitely the wrong thing to do. the day ginny was born, zachary never showed up at the hospital. by the time anyone checked on him, he had packed up and left for good. anne marie wasn't all that surprised, after all, he hadn't been the happiest about the pregnancy in the first place, and she knew that in the long run, she'd be raising their child all alone. with the help of zachary's parents, the first few months were a lot easier than she had expected, even with her two jobs. by the time ginny was three, she had already grown slightly accustomed to not having a father figure, her mom was all she needed and they were doing just fine on their own. • with ginny often staying with her paternal grandparents while her mother worked, the question of where her father actually was came in to play. sure, she knew that they didn't need him, but she was curious as to why her dad wasn't around to take her to the playground like the other dads did for their kids. soon enough, the answer to that question was proposed when zachary finally showed his face back in town. ginny was six years old, had never seen the man before in her life, and the fact that he was around seemed more like a threat to her than anything. the woman that was clinging to his arm and hanging onto his every word didn't bring her much comfort either, especially when anne marie showed up to take ginny home. the living room of the small home was more like a hostile warzone, a place the small child definitely didn't need to be - caught in the middle of a loving mother and a, well, deadbeat father. even at that young age, it was clear to her that her father being around wasn't something she could've questioned, especially if it caused her mother the pain that she could see on her face. zachary's pathetic excuse for not being around was that "he just couldn't deal with the responsibility." anne marie, of course, couldn't take that for an answer considering she had raised their daughter more or less on her own for six, going on seven, years. • zachary and his fiancée shannon stuck around for the next two months, trying their best to worm their way into ginny's life. she didn't want her father around, not when she saw him yell at her mother every single time they came into contact. she was scared of him, something that was definitely understandable, but she was even more afraid of shannon. the looks she threw at ginny made her uncomfortable, made her want to crawl under the kitchen table and pull in all the chairs so that she couldn't see her. in simple english, the woman gave her the creeps. on the eve of ginny's seventh birthday, anne marie was on her way home from picking up her birthday cake when she was hit head on by a drunk driver. for four days, she was in critical condition until her body finally gave up, something ginny had prayed wouldn't happen since her grandparents had gotten the phonecall. it was that age that she already begun to lose her faith - all she did for those four days was pray, she didn't even want to eat, want to leave her room, and yet, god still took her mother away from her. but then, she tried again. she prayed for the next few weeks that custody hearing would leave her with her grandparents, leave her just out of grasp of her "father". and then it happened. all sense of faith had left her when the judge awarded her to zachary and shannon, the home she had always known becoming a home of the past to plant her in a new one on the east coast, where shannon's family lived. • in november of 1995, ginny arrived in new jersey. all she had taken with her were a couple of pairs of clothes, pictures of anne marie, and the bear that her mom had given to her the day she was born. it was something that she couldn't seem to sleep without anymore, especially since she received the news. the house was old, new to her though. two stories and beautiful, but it still wasn't home. her room was large, the first one to the left of the stairs with an amazing view of the small pond they had just outside. looking at it only reminded her of summers when she had gone swimming with her mother in the lake just over the county line. it was disappointing having to leave all of the memories behind, mainly because of the circumstances. in time, she grew accustomed to zachary. he may not have been the model dad for the first years of her life, but now, he was all she had, whether she liked it or not. over the next two years, her life had looked up, minus a few details. shannon was now mrs. shannon barrett, and it made ginny's life a living hell. the woman was lazy, rude, and worst of all, abusive. it was always "ginny do the dishes," or "ginny do the laundry." it wasn't difficult, but as a nine year old child, ginny wasn't too thrilled to be doing it, and when she didn't, there were consequences. most of the time ginny blamed the fresh bruises on just being a kid. it was more or less "oh, i fell out of a tree" or "i tripped." she did all she could to curb her father's suspicion, after all, she may not have liked shannon (at all), but zachary loved her, she meant something to him, and ginny knew how it felt to have someone you loved ripped away from you. • it was barely a year longer before zachary came home early from work one day to see ginny cowering in the corner of the kitchen with a fresh handprint on her face and shannon yelling at her like her life depended on it. it was one thing for her to put her hands on his daughter, it was whole other thing for her to do it because she was too lazy to do the dishes herself. even if it was a first strike, she was gone. he couldn't afford his daughter being hurt after all he gone through to try and gain a relationship with her. she was only ten years old and had already been through so much. zachary thought it was a pity, a shame. ginny was a quiet child, not one of those cry for attention children. she listened, she did her schoolwork, she got along well with others, and yet, bad things seemed to happen to her on a regular basis. after being dragged to church one day, she was scolded by the sunday school leaders because she admitted that she didn't believe in god. she sat there in her chair and told every kid in the room that god didn't exist, because if he did, bad things wouldn't happen to people that didn't deserve it. when her father was alerted, it almost broke his heart to hear that someone so young thought such things, but it wasn't as if he couldn't see where she was coming from. she wasn't punished, but he did sit down and talk with her that night before bed. he tried to explain to her that god worked in mysterious ways, but she wouldn't budge. all she said to him was "when you can explain to me why god singles out the nicest people for death, i'll believe in him" and then she turned over in bed and went to sleep. • the next three years of her life were filled with nothing but repetition. wake up, sleep, get dressed, go to school, come home, do homework, eat, shower, sleep. monday through friday it was that routine, over and over until it almost ached inside to perform it again. being thirteen was much harder than most people thought. the loads of schoolwork got worse by the grade level, and though she can handle it easily, it just seemed like too much. she always did her work (minus a time or two when she was sick), showed up pretty much every single day and on time. poor ginny even won a perfect attendance award two years in a row, something even she found to be pretty pathetic. she found it surprisingly easy to make friends in junior high, maybe it was because she was just pretty friendly and non-judgemental, or maybe it was because she could teach you how to solve a math equation or analyze a poem in five minutes or less. it was that year in eight grade that she met adrie who is now her self-proclaimed favorite pain in the ass (aka her best friend). despite the party lifestyle of most of her friends at that point in time, it wasn't until her sophomore year of high school that she really got into it. • throughout high school, her friends often looked at ginny's house as a place to stay when they needed to get away. zachary was surprisingly understanding and it at least reassured him that his daughter had someone to fall back on other than him if something were to ever happen. the last thing he wanted was for her to go through something alone, and if she couldn't talk to him about it, he would settle for letting a few teenage girls take over the job. oddly enough, ginny could come stumbling through the back door at four in the morning and her father would trust that she was probably helping some other poor kid. in all honesty, she was just really good and holding her liquor and even better at playing it off. her friends often told her that if they all got drunk and showed up at school the next day, she'd be the only one that would make it through the day without a teacher or another kid expecting anything. • in 2006, she graduated from high school, and believe it or not, she just didn't have the nerve to skip town and follow every girl's dream of becoming a big star in california. by the time the "school season" rolled around, she was enrolled into a community college well determined to earn her associate degree in nursing. now almost twenty-one, she has her degree and has her first major job as a nurse at a local gynecologist's office. it may not be everyone's dream job, but it's her first step to climbing what she likes to call her career ladder aka making her way to the hospital as a critical care/ICU nurse. |