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                                          i survived…                                                        …but i paid for it

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holy moly i just took a good three hour nap after class, and i missed all the introductions. well since i’m never on time to anything ( sorry don’t hate me ) i tried to make up for it by explaining my trash child in depth below, you can skip through the first half to read the summary at the end bUT i promise the self para is worth a read if ya wanna know my gal. i’ll try to get past the boring stuff, i’m aria most people tend to call me ari & i can’t wait to meet everyone of you. please don’t judge how many hamilton references i’ll make, it’s a problem and i’m working on it. any whoot i can’t wait to plot w every single one of you babes ! ps tw: death, depression, trichotillomania, self harm, & suicide risk ( if you’d like to not hear about any of these things, feel free to message me & i’ll give you a summary of rosalina without them! )

a self para?? ( bc i’m so extra )

How do you mourn when your own body is a complete and total reminder of your loss? Rosalina hadn’t quite figured it out.  She stared at the reflection of her sister in the mirror.  Identity was a fickle thing, especially when half of it is ripped away overnight.  Her heavy head fell to the side, tilted and her jaw slightly slackened leaving her soft pink lips parted.  The shadows fell heavily across her face making the contours look like deeply pitted bruises in the early morning light that filtered through the shades of her bedroom window.  A fierce, stern knock sounded from her door. The noise nearly caused Rose to jump out of her own skin.  If only it were so easy.

“Rosalina, you’d better be up and getting ready,” it was her father’s authoritative voice advised through the door.

Of course Rose was awake.  It was rare when the girl truly slept, not since everything happened.  The pills they gave her, coupled with their white lies of faith and healing, kept her in a fog during the day but her mind buzzed horribly during the night.  Uncountable hours were spent watching the pillow on the bed opposite hers which had long since stopped smelling of her sister, her attention buzzing with unthinkable concepts to healthy minds, all while her forefinger unknowingly traced the roadmaps of scar tissue telling a journey of loss across her forearm.

The face of her double stared back at her in the mirror making Rose’s stomach tick and curl.  She felt her chin quiver and she sniffed hard looking at the contents spread across her vanity.  The smooth tan surface was stained with rich, bronze foundation and drugstore hair dye in attempt to strip the features that had tied her to Penelope. She picked up her foundation sponge and watched the nude liquid drip onto the back of her hand, a perfect match. Rosalina had long since stopped fooling herself that a change in her appearance would fool others into security concerning her mental state.  She dipped her sponge tentatively before applying it to her face over her eyelids and lips.  She opened her eyes again, their slight green, like a spring she knew would never live to see come, the only relief from the bronze-smooth skin.  

The lid to her cream blush hadn’t been put on correctly.  She looked down at the small pot of dried out, deep pink cosmetics cracked like a small section of scorched desert. She parted her lips, which had been stuck together from being held together so tightly in anxiety, and spit into the jar.  She rubbed the saliva around the blush to reconstitute its creamy texture. Had Poppy been there Rose surely would have been scolded, maybe even roughhoused a little in lighthearted affection. Rosalina’s only consequence was a comfortless silence.  

The doorknob to the closet had been taken off promptly after Rose’s outburst. She stuck her fingers in the hole, pulling the door open.  Her hand lifted to the back of her head as her eyes scanned the array of clothing. Rosalina twisted a single strand of hair around her finger and pulled upward, a swift, small, quick action, pulling the hair out from the root.  She dropped it to the floor, pulling another, another, another, before ever noticing the action.  Her face flushed as she ran the tip of her finger over the area she had pulled from.  The empty space was detectable, a few hairs poking at her where the regrowth had begun again.  She rushed to her mirror, grabbing the brush in urgency.  She pulled her hair up into one hand, hardly able to contain the curls in her grasp, even with what she was convinced was an entire lock and curl of hair pulled out from the roots, before pulling an elastic band to hold it.  She would have to wear her hair in special ways.  Her mother was sure to notice.

Trichotillomania was only one of the many words thrown across the clinical room from the doctor’s file to her grief stricken parents. Depression, self-harm, suicide risk and survivor’s guilt followed. Rose had hung her head in defeat. The words and diagnosis meant nothing to her but a botched attempt at true healing.  What did this man know about her, or her parents? Didn’t any of them know the weight upon her chest, the terrible love she’d been subjected to by the virtue of being the surviving twin? The burden of living without her same wasn’t one she could carry.  The absence of Penelope wore away at Rosalina like the agony of a phantom limb.

They were going to send her there again, a strange place with blindingly white walls.  When she walked into those doors it make her problems seem to grow three fold.  She felt more alone than ever before.  Still, out of instinct, she found her hand reaching to take Poppy’s for comfort, desperate grasps for that same phantom limb.  Instead she got pills, diagnoses, white lies, blank notebook pages to express her thoughts and document her loss, and forced smiles like those on her grandmother’s painted china clowns.  They frightened Rose screaming, live, live, live.  Some stranger in her brother’s skin had showed up as well.  Since when had he cared? And did he think he was like the sutures in her arm, a simple fix that could replace Poppy by virtue of common blood, to stitch her together and heal her? They pressured her to live on without half her heart, breathe without lungs, but all Rose could think of was how peaceful it might be to drown.

She had looked up statistics. A person could last six minutes without oxygen, but Rosalina knew she hadn’t breathed in months silently cursing the human body and all it’s resilience.

Summary

Originally from Santa Cruz, California Rosaline was born into a middle class family beside her twin sister Penelope & an older brother ( possibly a wc i’ll be sending in, definitely think it’d be interesting to see him played! )

Heading home from a party on west cliff, they were just sixteen when the accident changed Rose’s entire existences. They hadn’t had more that two drinks Rosalina was keeping track the entire night, and yet when the twin sisters climbed into their beat up Toyota they were forced to share – One of them never made it home. Falling asleep at the wheel, partially intoxicated, Penelope drove the pair off the rocky cliffs straight into the ocean current. It’s a miracle Rose had survived, she heard that more than a million times the months following. Yet, as those months passed the more she wanted to be in that deep water with the same fate her sister had faced. Living without the one person in the world who truly understood her, it was like the world was constantly on fire without Poppy. Nothing made sense, nothing felt right, every passing day she lost herself a little more.

The pills helped settle the depression, the therapy over the next three years helped her work through the hair pulling, but life never really felt normal. Loosing a twin isn’t like loosing a sibling, that night Rosalina lost a part of herself she could never get back. A part of herself she blamed for not being able to save, arguably the best part of her heart. Though it’s not something she can shake, living every day wishing things had turned out different, with time Rose learned to live life again. Finishing high school a year later than expected, she applied to colleges around the United States – anything far enough to start a new life. 

Flash forward six years from the accident – Rosalina strays away from any memory of that night, the nightmares don’t haunt her quite as often, and though she misses Poppy every day she’s attempting to live life in honor of her sister. Rose is the kind of girl you can’t help being friends with, though she has a soft & effervescent exterior that one would assume glows from the inside out – she’s also quite mysteriously and drawn back at times. It’s a numb existence filled with prescription medications, a drink to forget the past, and a few puffs to relax the tension where her body seems to ache in place of her double. It’s still taken on day at a time, with pre rehearsed responses to the same “how are you feeling?” she’s learning to be okay with not being okay some days. Moving to Norely has helped get her away from the memories, and though she’s still in school waitressing pays most the bills now a days. 

I hope that gives you a good idea of who my trash child is & I can’t wait to see everyone on the dash as a big family. I’ve been dying to play Rose out for the past three months, I just hadn’t found the right place so I’m hoping this is it for us! If you’re interested in plotting please feel free to like this post or ofc come to my ims & I’ll reply asap x

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She had a way of seeing the beauty in others, even, and perhaps most especially, when that person couldn’t see it in themselves.

J.K. Rowling (via goodreadss)

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