I'm finally back from Sierra Leone! I learned a ton and am excited to send support and go back over next year. Happy July 4th!
Alice "Marionette" Mason- District Two female (17)
"Hearing voices that aren't there" is more or less the go-to when it comes to implying someone is batshit crazy. That's kind of rude if you ask me, since that's real life for some people. I'm not crazy. I have schizophrenia. It's an illness, just like diabetes or cancer. It's an illness in my brain and for two years it made me hear things that weren't there and act irrational until eventually I ended up in a hospital. Then a doctor said I had schizophrenia and tried a few different medications until one worked and now I don't hear voices anymore. Simple as that.
There was probably something Freudian about how much I loved puppets. An intellectual type would probably say it was because puppets didn't talk. I was the one with the voice, not someone else inside my head. As I gently untangled the little snags the puppets always got in their strings, no matter how carefully I packed them, I thought back to the day a nurse set up a little stage in the hospital rec room and brought out fascinating little puppets with details and articulations that captivated me. It probably helped that the show was about the Hunger Games. The Hunger Games was about the only consistent thing in my unstable life.
Minerva was the first puppet I ever got. She had red hair and green eyes and one hand curled up so she could hold a weapon. I got her in the hospital after the medication cleared up all the crossed wires in my brain and it was almost time for me to go home. The nurses were happy I was recovering but still a little sad to say goodbye. Nurse Aquila laid Minerva in my arms the day I left and a week later I did my first show in the town square. I didn't do it for money or anything. I just loved making the little wooden people dance and fight and carry out their little lives.
It was hard to do a Hunger Games puppet show since I couldn't operate more than three puppets at once, and I could only do three if one of them stayed pretty still. But that was the theme I always came back to. The Hunger Games had marked my life almost as much as the mental illness. It was still unfathomable to me how for three years it seemed completely rational to me that a District Thirteen spy had warned me that the Capitol had sent a league of assassins to target me and the only way to defend myself was to learn fighting skills, win the Hunger Games and lead a revolution. Winning the Hunger Games was the only part of that I still held onto. Part of me didn't want all that training to go to waste. Part of me was just being a proud citizen of District Two. Part of me thought I was a perfect Career because violence and death didn't bother me. It used to when I was little but as I grew up it got fainter and fainter. I learned from my mother how cruel and violent people can be for no reason at all and after that human life didn't seem that valuable. The doctors say that might even have started the schizophrenia. It was already there, since it was genetic and all, but with some people it stays buried until a trigger awakens it. Stress- like the kind of stress from an abusive childhood- is the most likely culprit. So thanks to my mom I gained schizophrenia and lost my regard for human life. Yet she still wonders why I left her to stay with my father. That's way crazier than hearing voices.
Stevie Pagett- District Eleven female (18)
My mother didn't like me to be out of her sight. Of course I wouldn't want to run away. I love my mother and I need my mother. I'd always been a very sickly child and she'd spent years caring for me with all her skills as a trained nurse. Even if I had a spell of mental illness and wanted to run away and get into trouble I couldn't. I'd die without my medication. It would take a while for the cancer to kill me but it would come for me in the end. Also there are four steps in front of our front door. Four steps doesn't seem like a lot but it is when you're in a wheelchair.
I didn't like it when my mother wasn't around either. She wasn't gone, really. She was just in bed. Usually I was in bed too at so late an hour. I needed a lot of sleep because I had a weak immune system. Staying up too late usually got me a fever or a cold or just vague fatigue. A lot of things got me sick. Talking too much to other people got me sick. Being outside the house for too long got me sick. Exerting myself got me sick. It was better for me to stay inside the house and occupy myself with gentle interests like studying or working on the fantasy world I'd been adding to for years. I liked to make fake maps and write entries in a leather notebook I used as a history.
That wasn't what I was doing that night. I was looking out the glass of the front door and thinking about what was out there in the world. Sometimes I daydreamed since I didn't want to explore it in real life. I hated it when I overexerted myself and got sick. I was already so needy and high-maintenance. I hated how much time and effort my mother had to spend on me. I couldn't even work or contribute around the house much more than washing some dishes or dusting the windowsills. I was just a big useless lump.
I didn't know much about the outside world but I knew one thing: Callum was out there. Callum was the best boyfriend ever and probably the kindest and noblest person in the world. He was the first person who treated me like a normal person instead of a tragic inspirational sick kid. He told me I could do anything and the more time I spent with him the more I believed it. And after while I didn't even need to believe it. I'd proved it.
I'd started to suspect my mother even before I met Callum. Sometimes the medicines she gave me didn't add up. Sometimes the side effects even matched the symptoms she told the doctor I'd just developed. It was strange how often I got sick after I met a new friend and started to talk about my life. And it was strangest of all when I stood up from my chair one day to see how long it would take me to faint and I didn't faint at all.
Mom suspected me too. The phantom symptoms she pointed out had been much more psychological lately. Suddenly it seemed that I was anxious and depressed and kept forgetting things and maybe I needed to start on some psychiatric medication. Maybe I needed the kind of medication that would make me think less and do less and meekly sit and do nothing.
Callum was out there somewhere in the night. At any moment he'd arrive to do the unspeakable thing we'd agreed on when it was clear there was no other escape. My mother locked the deadbolt high above my head every night before she went to bed. But Callum would be able to get in. I'd unlocked it.
Alice: Japanese heritage descent mixed Korean, 5'9 Lithe sinewy body type, Cheshire cat smile with a glint in her eyes, Long black hair
Stevie: Stevie is biracial with medium colored skin, and she has freckles all over her face and arms. She is bald from chemo treatments and has an average looking face. She is about 5 foot 4 and is very thin, looking more sickly than she truly is.
That is all the forms I currently have. Below is who I need and who has the reservation. If you see yourself in there then please send in your form when you can (unless you already did and I just messed up- totally possible). I'm not in a big rush or anything but I literally can't write anymore until I have more forms. If you're busy you can send a skeleton form with just the name and a condensed personality. Literally like three sentences is fine.
District Four male: JAJ
District Four female: Annaluvsenti
District Eight male: (Auroramiri?)
District Eight female: Okay so I wrote this one down as "Sparky" but I asked SparkaLeah and it's not her I'm not sure whose this is so if it was yours PM me pls. (RM Buchal?)
District Eleven male: ladyqueerfoot (one of these was for her friend I forgot which one)