Post by shazam on Jan 3, 2010 19:27:19 GMT -5
AUDÉ AXELLE GERMAINE.
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* FEELS JUST LIKE WE'RE LOSING CONTROL.
and if you let go, then i'll let go tonight.[/center]
TELL US ABOUT YOURSELF.
"Hello! Firstly, you should know that I am not completely knockers, and am well aware that this is not a job application, nor am I handing you a resume. It is, indeed, the information you requested in print form, to make life so much easier for the both of us. You will come to learn that I am a deaf dummy, and speak at a personal record of seven words per minute. My tongue feels like a giant dead thing in my mouth, and I have no way of knowing if I'm even speaking correctly or not! Okay, now we have the elephant out of the way. My name is, unfortunately, Aude Axelle Germaine. My father's french and my mother a wannabe, as reflected in my title. But really...Aude? It's pronounced 'Odie' like the hideous dog-bug thing that used to give me nightmares in the comics, but it's such an ugly, lumpy collection of letters it can't even be cute. I'm sixteen years old, and my birthday is December Tenth, two weeks before Christmas. Uh... Go me? It's not as exciting as it sounds. One of the many reasons guys tended to look the other direction when I was around...Nobody wants the awkwardness of trying to figure out the pronunciation of a foreign name from a dummy. Aside from that, I'm a towering Goliath of five foot three, and my highest weight was one one zero. I dunno what I am now. They keep me away from the scales... judging from my pudgy joints I'd say at least ninety-five. ew. My goal is to remain equal to or older than my birth year - 93 or under. No, I don't mind talking...er, informing about it. And finally, in case you haven't already noticed, I'm a natural honey blonde, with great big baby blues. I want brown contacts, though. Dark brown would be so much prettier against light hair and pale skin. Speaking of pretty, someone once showed me a picture of this girl, Zoe Kimball, and said I looked like her. She's an internet model or something. But she's so thin and pretty - I don't see it.
TELL US ABOUT YOUR MEDICAL HISTORY.
[/size][/font]"Hoo-boy. This is going to be fun. Let's take a walk down memory lane, shall we?
I've always been deaf. I guess Mother flew too much while carrying me and permanently clogged my ears. Actually, not clogged. My ear drums are literally severed from the rest of my ear, and acted little more than an inflammatory piece of interior flesh for the first nine years of my life. I was so prone to ear infections from them that when I was ten my parents went ahead and had them removed. My hearing was beyond hope by then, so it was no big loss. I learned sign language like any normal child learns to speak, and I didn't start speech therapy until I was seven. I recognize individual letters and can associate them to movements of my lips, tongue and teeth, but it just feels and looks so awkward that I've tried to limit myself to mandatory words. I know Audé, variations on mother and father, thank you, please and I'm sorry as naturally as is possible by now. My hearing loss isn't actually the biggest deal in my life right now; I've never known anything but it, and everybody's a sucker for a gimpy anyway. Oh, and I've been reading lips as long as I've been reading words, so there's no awkwardness there. I was able to attend a normal high school as long as I sat up front and was able to watch the teacher speak.
"I guess the reason I'm here is the low self-confidence and desperation to fit in that I've always felt. It's sort of come to a head-on collision during these lovely adolescent years. It started with the eating disorder - in High School, all the girls had at least one boy admirer. Of course I had crushes and attractions, and became so desperate to get at least one guy to see past my gimp and give me a chance that I stopped eating; I knew thin was pretty, and my reasoning was if I was pretty I'd finally be noticed. Oh, I was noticed all right. My friends from my 'special' extra class saw that I'd pretend to eat really quickly and then throw away my still-full lunch bag. I thought I could rely on them, of all people, but they betrayed my trust and alerted my teachers who told my parents. I went in to lock-down then. I refused to communicate with anybody and wouldn't look anybody in the eye when they talked to me, because I knew they just didn't understand. I started to eat again so I could go back to school, but that's when I learned I could get rid of it -after- I swallowed it. I thought I had discovered a perfect world; Being able to eat and taste what I wanted, without the calories and the fat. It went swell for a while, until the side affects kicked in. My hair started falling out, and I passed out on the bus one day.
"The straw that broke the camel's back were the nightmares. The stress just started to pile up - desperate to be nothing less that beautiful and perfect and totally datable at school, while trying to maintain my previously good grades. I was so hungry and weak all the time, I couldn't concentrate on anything. I began to bruise easily, too. Gym class was brutal - I'd come home with big blue and black splotches all over my body, and I was forced to wear baggy clothes and long sleeves so nobody would notice the physical difference. I was so sick from the ana that I started to not allow myself to sleep at night because I was afraid I wouldn't be strong enough to wake up. But when I did sleep, apparently I allowed myself the stress and emotional release that I didn't allow myself during the day. I wasn't keeping a journal or anything; apparently I had been doing this eating disorder thing all wrong. I started screaming at night and freaking out my little brother and parents. It started off okay - I just told everybody it was a nightmare, and amazingly they were okay with that. But eventually I became too tired to even wake myself up with the thrashing and throat-scratching of my own screams. Officially known as night terrors. I'd start screaming at promptly one fifty to two two thirty every night, and when I wouldn't stop my parents would come and try to wake me up, but I'd fight them - still asleep. I'd scratch and pull and grab and scream that I was being raped and murdered - Well, that was my stream of thought, anyway. Lord knows I couldn't make my tongue work at that hour, or even knew the words I wanted, so undoubtedly it just came out as gibberish. I'd have no memory of it the next morning, and that's finally when Mother and Father gave up, the poor dears. I know they had tried their hardest, but after that they pulled me out of school, chucked me out the door and shipped me here. Huzzah. Among friends now... Whee."
HOW CAN WE ACCOMODATE YOU BETTER?
[/size][/font]"Okay...I don't like being made to do things I don't want to. Not like in terms of chores, or homework or whatever. That would just be stupid. I mean, in terms of doing things that are out of my character, or break my moral rules - Like eating. I hated being made to eat here, but they take away other privileges every time I refuse or purge. I also don't like hot weather, which was why I was sososo happy when my Father got transferred from Florida. Florida...I didn't like Florida. It was big and loud and sticky and commercial. No charm at all. I try to be patient, but eventually I just can't deal with overly ignorant people, or idiots. People who talk (hah!) down to me, talk slowly with exaggerated movements because they think I appreciate the help... ugh. I know I'm a gimp, but I try so hard and put so much effort into being a normal, teenage member of society I hate to be reminded that I'm a freak. That I'm 'special', whatever that means. I'm going to attend college, I'm going to become a pediatrician. I know I have to work on my speech, but I'm going to do it, I don't needed to be reminded that I shouldn't be able too.
Okay. Let's get happy now. I actually love children, because they have an excuse to think I'm weird, but they don't have to pretend otherwise. They're so impressionable, too, that after they get to know me they know I'm just another alien teenage creature, which is cool. I like the rain, the snow, swimming. I was on the dive team at school. I love vintage clothing, everything from bell bottoms to corsets to lacy blouses and twenties pin curls. I'm a movie and fiction geek, because good stories let me escape from my own life for a while. My favorite book of all time is Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. I can read it in a day and cry all the way through. On the subject of vintage and entertainment, I think Turner Classic Movies is the best thing to ever happen to this world. Despite the need for closed-captioning, I love face-sucking passionate black-and-white kisses, I love Myrna Loy and Judy Garland and Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart and Charlie Chaplin. I think the first fifty years of cinema is the best example of what it can be. Okay, more noticeably, I like hunger pains and looking good in skinny jeans. I love my ribs and hipbones, and I adore being noticed by the opposite sex, once in a blue moon when it happens. Also, cats. I want to be a kitty when I grow up. I think they're the most beautiful, most amazing and intelligent creatures on this planet, and I hope to be half as cool as a street-wise tabby someday.
"I was the prodigal child before coming here. I got good grades, stayed out of trouble and showered every morning. Because I had no social life outside my family, I was always baking and cleaning and creating centerpieces out of backyard floatsam, just like a mini-Martha. I rode every week at a therapeutic riding stable outside town; not that I needed therapy, but the owner had a son in my special needs class at school. She knew sign, and didn't charge for me to come over. I taught myself to ride, and that's how I learned self-discipline. Before I became sick I never let my emotions get the better of me, and because I was so eager to make a good impression and please everybody I came off as very polite and well-adjusted. I've been sort of depressed since I came here. There's no spirit, nothing to get excited about. I try to make a good impression everyday, and I stuff my pockets with stones during weigh-in. I want out, but I'm afraid of what's waiting for me on the other side. I know I'll relapse, I'm not strong enough to stop myself. I have no will of my own'; I've always gone out of my way to make sure everybody else got what they wanted, to try and make people like me. It's worked, to a degree. They like me, but still keep enough distance to avoid friendship. Argh. Not that I don't have anything against my 'own kind', I just don't want to limit my life to other dummies. I have big plans, and most of them involve other people."
TELL US ABOUT YOUR PAST.
[/size][/font]"<narrator>
Aude does not know she is adopted. As far as she's concerned, she's the genetic anomaly child of a brown-haired, brown-eyed father and a brown-haired, hazel-eyed mother. she was one of two babies born on the same day to the Parker family. Shortly after their birth it became obvious that Aude was different than her sister; she didn't cry, and didn't respond to basic cues. A panic, and a series of tests followed which revealed that not only was Aude, then Mallory Beatrice, completely deaf but also had a swelling on either side of her head, pushing against her ears and soft brain. There was emergency surgery to drain the growths, but as a new-born infant there was no way to know whether it had affected her development, or how long it had been expanding in her head. Mr. and Mrs. Parker had nothing but good intentions in mind when they made the decision to give up Aude to the care of someone they felt could take better care of her. They decided they wouldn't be able to take care of a drooling vegetable of a child, teenager and possibly adult, if she lived that long. She was taken in soon after by a couple who, while perfectly able to conceive, felt they could offer a good home to a child already seeking one. It was a closed adoption, so Aude would never know the parents that didn't think she was good enough, and her adoptive parents have kept her in the dark about the adoption not wanting to hurt her. Sixteen years later, this is what Aude know about her upbringing.
</narrator>
"You know by now I was born deaf. Mom and pop said there was swelling inside my ears pushing onto my brain when I was born, and for about the first year of my life there was doubt that my mind would develop at the same pace of my body; but, aside from the obvious hearing loss, by two years of age I was progressing and responding as any other child should, already recognizing basic signs like 'mother' or 'bed'. My father made sure that I learned both English and French sign growing up; He's convinced that I'm destined to settle down in the land of my forefathers. Maybe... Anyway, although I was forced to attend a special pre-school and kindergarten where the learning is more crucial and hands-on, by grade four I was fluent enough in the language of lips to attend public school. Grade school was okay; The teachers made it more than clear that they had no tolerance for the bullying of a gimpy student, not that they used that word, and the children loved my little typing device (see below), so I was popular enough, too. I learned quickly; I loved to read, to be able to share a piece of the real world with everyone else. And because I was forced to think outside the box, I was creative, too. I wrote a comic strip every week for the school newspaper about a penguin that wanted to be a skateboarder and it's friend, a small boy and his dog. It was actually really awesome.
"Junior high got harder, because the kids began seeing their friends and significant others as an extension of themselves, and because I had to be staring at someone to understand them, couldn't use a cell phone and was slower than everyone else in expressing my own opinion I had become little more than extra baggage. I joined the dive team and began participating in extracurricular activities in order to get my name out there and improve my image, but it impressed only my teachers, and I didn't want to be the only one spending Friday night at a middle-aged persons house. I was always self-conscious and had poor self-esteem, but that's how all my current problems started bubbling to the surface. I tried wearing different clothes, and doing my makeup differently in hopes that someone, some day would notice and walk right up to me and say: "Gee, Aude, You look really great today. Want to eat lunch together?" It didn't happen. Of course, I had my friends from my extra "special" class I took on developing my basic language and social skills, but they were all as awkward, if not more, than myself and it was hard to ever get a groove going with those guys.
"I started my eating disorder when I was fifteen. I wanted to be pretty, and noticed and normal like every other wannabe social butterfly in my school. It started off perfectly. I loved the hunger pangs, which meant it was working, and got a high from reaching my goals. My lowest was eighty pounds, but I wasn't happy; I was exhausted. I became so weak that I'd sleep on the bus instead of in bed because I knew that somebody there should know CPR if I didn't wake up. The high left as quickly and dramatically as it had arrived, and my hair started falling out and I started to bruise and I was angry at everybody all the time. The nightmares started when I -would- allow myself some sleep at night. I was too tired to wake up, and fought my parents tooth and nail, still unconscious, when they tried. My little brother was afraid of me, I wasn't communicating with anybody and my grades had taken a nosedive like you couldn't imagine. I started therapy and treatments, but I was finally admitted here after screaming at my own grandmother for getting me a sweater-skirt combination I thought was ugly. I feel terrible now, not just over the outfit (which really wasn't so bad in the first place), but for everyone I've alienated and hurt. I want to get better so that I can get on with my life, but I know that as soon as I'm released the ghosts of old habits will make their triumphant return.
So, either way, I win."
IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE?
[/size][/font]"I used to have this handy little device. It was like a labeler, or an old fashioned calculator. All the keys were on one end, and a little roll of paper on the other. Back in the days when my handwriting was still scrummy, I'd use it so other people could understand me. That's how I became the master typist when I was at school. A hundred words a minute! But now I have hella premature carpal tunnel, from typing and printing so much, so I need to use a brace on my write hand during the day or else it feels like it's been smashed with a hammer. Also, to make life easier for the both of us, could you please keep eye contact if you're talking to me? Aw, thanks so much."
THE MASTERMIND BEHIND IT ALL.
[/size][/font]hey, my name is SPRINKLE.[/color] i have SIXTEEN[/color] tracks spinning on my record. this is my FIRST[/color] character. i have been roleplaying for THREE YEARS[/color]. the password is silicone and saline poison, inject me[/color].[/font][/size]
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KITTY PARSONS FLIPPED her strawberry blond hair in front of the washroom mirror, running a comb through the back before pinning it up at the top of her head and out of her face.
"All I'm wondering," she said through her teeth, biting a hold on the hair clip in her mouth while arranging the locks with her hands, "Is that why not do it? I know it makes me one of those taboo scary 'bad people' that today's children hear so much about, but I've never offered a hershey to a kid. People like candy. I like to like people and be liked in return. Where's the harm there? The worst trouble I've been in is having been yelled at by a Catholic girl on diet and being scolded on temptation and minding my own business. I never saw her again, though, so it's no big deal. Wow! They changed the soap dispensers?"
AS SHE TIDIED for an afternoon session, a secretary had approached her in the washroom with an inquiry as to why she insisted on awarding chocolate to the well-behaved. It was obvious by the end of Kitty's speech that she had regretted ever asking, but remained stoic and resisted the urge to flee the room. With a polite thank you, she fled during a lull in the conversation after Katherine had noticed the new, automated soap dispensers in all their modern glory. Kitty waved goodbye before putting the finishing touch to her 'do and flitting a a little brush of rogue to across the apples of her cheeks to add color. She was, as always, in a good mood and the smile on her full lips stretched across her face and exposed her teeth just slightly. She forced her face into a look of professional interest as she appraised herself in the mirror, checking once over from each angle. Feeling satisfied enough, she brought the comb through her bangs once more before returning it to its bag and turning tale, skipping lightly out of the bathroom and back to facility life.
HER CASE FOR the 3:15 pm appointment was not an unfamiliar one. Kitty'd had more than a little experience with those of split-personality, and she had learned exactly how to treat them and behave herself. Each personality was a different person, and trying to convince them otherwise led to little more than heart ache for both sides of the party. Trust was a big issue for those who didn't know who exactly they were, and the first half hour was usually spent chatting casually about their days and laughing when appropriate. Subtly was also a big part of the job. Being too blatant, too blunt, was as well as a murder confession when it came to the paranoid. Instead of demanding the patient admit that they are one and only one, Kitty would try to bring together continuity, events that had occurred during one personality and that had affected in some way the other, most preferably whichever one lucid during their conversation. It was a lot to remember, and even more to put into action, but Katherine considered those types a special challenge and they were in fact her favorite cases. She knew enough though not to say that aloud, knowing that it would most likely come out the wrong way.
SHE WAS RUNNING just a little behind schedule. That was, depending on the patient, either a good or bad thing. For some it was positive, giving the patient time to adjust and find their own comfort in the unfamiliar situation. Most, though, were just damned impatient and would present the psychologist with a lecture on punctuality and professionalism upon arrival. It was impossible to tell where the preference lie when it came to those of multiple personality, so Kitty walked briskly and wasted no time. The points of her heels clicked in a pattern as she trotted up the stairs, shuffling papers in her hand and reviewing the patient file and history. This was not her first appointment with this patient, but they had so far made little progress. Mathias De Luca held a thick shell and allowed absolutely no cracks within it. She had struggled for entry into his world, and so far all in vain. Kitty held the patience of very few, though, and that combined with her incurable optimism and stubborn demeanor when it came to cases like his had her assigned him in the first place. She refused to show how flustered or frustrated he would sometimes make her, knowing weakness was the kryptonite to progress.
KITTY ARRIVED AT the appropriate floor at 3:20, exactly five minutes behind where she should be. The slightest hint of what might resemble panic fluttered across her eyes as she glanced at the watch, but it was gone as soon as it had arrived. Straightening herself and tidying the papers in her hand, she marched ahead and down the hall with all the assuredness and stoic countenance of a tried general in battle. She stopped, pausing for approximately twelve seconds and glancing at the name plate on the closed door in front of her. DR. KATHERINE R. PARSONS. She had never completely gotten over the fact that she had been assigned her own name plate. She knew though that it was not time to ogle, and straightened her gaze. Effortlessly, she applied her game face, an expression of calm and polite interest. A smile tugged at her lips, if modestly, lips remaining shut. In one swift movement she pushed the door open and nodded twice at the patient's escort who stood by the young man in the chair. The employee acknowledged her and shuffled silently out of the room. Kitty was all ease and graciousness.
"Good afternoon, Mr. De Luca," she said, gliding over to her seat across from him, knowing that he would show her whichever personality he was that day very quickly. There was a large pane of double-window at one side of the room, reflecting the two inside. If anything ever got out of hand with the patient, it would be spotted and taken care of. "I apologize for keeping you waiting. I'm afraid I'm running a bit behind of things today."
