Jared Everett was an unplanned pregnancy. Gene and Linda hadn't had a baby in the house in almost two decades, had just celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary, and were toying with the idea of early retirement, and selling the bookstore they'd been handed by Gene's father and moving somewhere warmer. Skipped periods, nausea, vomiting and hot flashes were blamed on menopause; it wasn't until Linda began putting on weight that they finally made an appointment to see the doctor.

Because of Linda's age, her doctor's said she was a high-risk pregnancy and advised her to be cautious. An eight pound, eleven ounce bundle, Jared was several days late - a fact his mother would swear shaped his personality from the moment of his birth. As a child, Jared was rambunctious and into everything; he enjoyed taking things apart and putting them back together to see how they worked - especially if his mother told him not to.

When high school rolled around, he took an immediate interest in Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC), and following the events of September 11, during his Freshman year of high school, decided he would enlist when he turned 18. His parents disagreed with the goings on, but his father was proud of his desire to serve and defend (as he'd done so in the Korean War and the Vietnam War, and his own father had served in World War II), but his mother was heart broken. She'd seen the effects war had on the mind and didn't want Jared to go through the same things his father and grandfather had. Unphased by his mother's concerns, Jared met with a recruiter following his eighteenth birthday. Of course nothing was official until he graduated highschool, but he felt better knowing he had a plan for his life.

It took his mother months to speak to him when he reported the news to her. The woman loved him, of course, but she couldn't wrap her head around why he'd be so reckless, why he'd put himself through the same emotional trauma his father and grandfather had been through. The journey through the ASVAB, physical examinations, countless meetings with counselors to determine a career, a background check and induction seemed to take forever, but the second he took the oath, Jared like he'd found a place to belong. The day he left for Basic Training, his mother was beside herself with grief and refused to get out of bed, so his father drove him.

His first deployment was as basic as they came - if it were possible to have an easy deployment, he had it. He wasn't in the middle of the fighting, and he was careful not to stand out too much. During his second deployment, however, he was sent to Afghanistan. From sun up to sundown, he remained on edge, he heard gunfire in his sleep, and he could only hope to see his friends and family again. A roadside ambush left three of his comrades (and himself) injured, and four others dead. He was lucky, when it came down to it; he was hit by a stray bullet. A shattered rotary cup seemed a small price to pay for the lives that'd been taken, in his mind, but it seemed his opinion didn't matter quite so much. Medically discharged in the winter of 2011, Jared returned Stateside and moved back in with his parents.

Unable to shake the fact that his prayers had been met in the cruelest of ways, Jared sought comfort in whisky. Days and nights became interchangeable, and it wasn't long until he became dependent on alcohol to sleep. He showing up to work hungover normally would've costed him his job, but since he'd been working at the bookstore his parents owned, his mother continued to make excuses for his behavior and his father became ill soon after, so her attention fell almost entirely to him. It was around this time that Jared was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Following an arrest for drunken disorderly, and another for assault after an argument at a gas station, which was later amended down to disorderly conduct and public intoxication, he was court ordered into group therapy.