BELLE, ophelia

[ophelia belle]

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[/size] Lady Modonna, lying on the bed. Listen to the music playing in your head. [/color], [/center][/blockquote][/blockquote]

Cause I'm comin' home,
I'm comin' home,

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hello, the name's, Ophelia Jane Belle
but people tend to call me, just Ophelia
I turned , twenty
on , January 19th
so that means I've been living , as a resident
when the days over i like me some , boys

I've seen a palace in London,
I've seen a castle in Wales,

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^*[/size] skin deep - - - - - [/blockquote][/right]

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well, my hair is, blonde
and I love my eyes, they're, blue green
and my skin colors this really cool, fair
mainly because I'm , English, Swedish, and Norwegian
I measure up to , five foot nothing
no Seattle Sutton's for me ! the scale says , ninety two
but it's kind of cool that I have , strong bone structure
and my style blows yours away , Ophelia doesn’t have a style. For her entire childhood, up until she graduated from high school really, she wore what her mother told her to wear. And it was never anything cute or in style, it was always plain, feminine but beyond modest. Hemlines were never above her knees, and she never, ever wore pants or t-shirts. She spent most of her time in jumpers and button down shirts with peter pan collars. She wore Mary-Janes and socks, she was a fashion victim in every way, but she didn’t really mind, because she didn’t know anything different. Once she started at public school, she was surprised to see the way that most girl’s dressed, that they wore pants and shorts and cropped tops, and all these things she’d never seen before. She had no desire to dress that way. Now that she is sort of on her own, Ophelia has let up the restrictions a little bit, but she sticks to her modest upbringing. Nothing can reveal too much, everything is still feminine. She sticks to mostly skirts and dresses, things that are pretty simple. She likes solid colors, natural fabrics, things with more classic shapes. She doesn’t wear heels ever, but she’s moved away from the socks and Mary-Janes look. She wears mostly basic flats, nothing fancy, she avoids fancy clothes. She doesn’t do beads or sequins; she doesn’t own anything glamorous or sexy, nothing with plunging necklines. Her idea of underwear is white and cotton, she shudders to think about the things some people wear. But she tries not to judge people by their clothes, like she hopes people don’t judge her for hers. But she can’t really help it, she is kind of a judgmental person, it is a fault, she knows. But she just doesn’t understand the things that pass as clothing.
so over - all ,
Blonde. And yes, that is the color it is supposed to be, the color that nature intended her to have. It is a pretty pale shade of blonde, it gets lighter and darker depending on the season. She doesn’t fuss over it much, after all, it is just dead protein, and there is no reason for her to freak out about it. When she was really little she had peroxide blonde hair, it was feathery and wispy, it stuck out at most angles. Her hair was kept long, her mother only trimmed it a few times a year, she had those awful bangs that every girl seems to have had, though Ophelia had them for a while, and it was nearly always back in a tight braid, or if her mother was feeling creative, it was styled like Heidi’s. Nowadays, without her mother to care for her hair, Ophelia keeps it as low maintenance as she can. It is medium length, fine, and slightly waved before she brushes it. She doesn’t pull her hair back that often, more often than not, it is in some sort of disarray, slept on and messy, and when it gets too bad, she’ll run a comb through it or just pull it into a messy bun. Ophelia just can’t be bothered with keeping her hair perfect; she has other things to think about.

Her eyes are sort of blue, sort of green. They don’t change color depending on her mood, like some people say theirs do, and they don’t change depending on the clothes she is wearing either. It is just a matter of personal opinion, some people say blue, other green. And sometimes, depending on the lighting, they’ll look more one way or the other, but for the most part, Ophelia says blue-green, her driver’s license says blue, but her permit said green, and she is thinking about changing it back when she gets her license renewed. It isn’t that big a deal to her, she just sort of sees them as eyes. They aren’t windows into her soul, nor do they express her every feeling, in fact, her eyes are usually rather expressionless, kind of blank. Ophelia doesn’t smile with her eyes; she doesn’t do much with them other than look. She is lucky to have pretty long lashes, which are naturally dark for her fair hair, not that she cares anyway. It isn’t like she thinks a lot about her eyelashes. She has a slightly bad habit of blinking less than most people, which makes her gaze a little unnerving, people usually try to avoid keeping eye contact with her for long periods of time, it creeps them out.

Ophelia has always been fair. As a child she was burned every summer, always the red faced girl whose mother was running after her with sun block, but she refused to have it. She spent a good deal of her childhood outside; she was heavily freckled, to her mother’s chagrin. But by the time she started high school, she stopped staying outside for long, and her freckles had started to fade. Ophelia began to worry about what the sun would do to her skin. She didn’t want to be one of those leathery old women who sagged about at beaches, their skin the same color as a sofa or a handbag. She didn’t want the wrinkles either. So Ophelia’s new war against the sun began, every morning, like an obsession, because it was, she applied SPF 60 to her entire body, head to toe, every inch of her was coated, and then again at noon and again at six thirty, she refused to be exposed to the sun, and she lectured people about it, about the perils of the sun to their skin. About skin cancer, about everything bad that could happen to them from a minute unprotected in the sunlight. She didn’t make too many friends that way, but she did leave most people rather well informed. And at least when she’s old, she’ll have the skin of an infant. Of course it was considered a little vain by her father, but her mother convinced him it was a health precaution.

Her bone structure is something that Ophelia always thought looked a little strange. She would never be one of those positively gorgeous girls, the kind who looked good in everything, but Ophelia is fond of her face, she won’t deny it. She likes that they set her apart from most other people, she doesn’t look like her mother, whose dainty facial structure was the stuff of legend during her early college years, nor is it anything like her father’s. In fact, no one knows where exactly where she got her looks from. Her face is oval shaped, her chin slightly pointed, but hardly angular. She has slightly wide set eyes, of the perfectly normal size. She has high cheekbones, and a masculine nose. The one thing she’d change about herself if she could, even though she knows that God made her the way she is for a reason, she can’t help but sometimes wish she could change one thing, or maybe two. Her lips are bow shaped, a little full, and naturally pink. She has a few moles scattered across her milky skin, but they aren’t cancerous, she is pretty sure of that. Ophelia doesn’t often smile, but when she does, if she means it, she smiles broadly, openly, and she really does look happy. But like I said, that isn’t a common occurrence.

Short. She has always been tiny in every way. She was born tiny; her mother worried about her quite a lot, wondering if it was normal for a little girl to be quite that small. Doctors told her that her daughter would grow soon enough, but she didn’t. Louise Belle was five foot seven and John Belle stands at six foot, so no one was quite sure where Ophelia’s tiny stature came from. When she was growing up, people always thought she was years younger than she was, simply because she was beyond short. In her freshman year of high school, she stood at only four foot ten. Thankfully, she grew another two inches, reaching her maximum height of five foot. Wow. She doesn’t really mind being short, while it is hard to find people in a crowd, and she does have problems when someone sits in front of her at the movies, as she can’t see. Ophelia has been short forever, she can’t imagine being tall, she doesn’t think it would suit her. Being short lets her slip into the background more easily, it lets her go unnoticed. And if she ever got really tired of being short, she could just wear heels and get to be an average height, but she doesn’t like heels, so, well, short she’ll stay.

Ophelia was tiny in both height and weight from day one. Her mother worried about her, about the fact that her daughter resembled a starving baby in Africa, even though she was well fed. Her ribs stuck out, her knees were knobby, and her elbows were pretty sharp: she looked like she hadn’t eaten in weeks. So Louise tried to get her to eat more, she always gave her daughter seconds, commanding her to eat, but Ophelia wasn’t often hungry, even as a little girl, she just didn’t like eating that much. She got full quickly and complained when her mother made her eat more. She suffered from frequent stomach aches and vomiting spells because of it, but her mother refused to give up. Eventually, Ophelia reached ninety pounds and her mother began to relent, it was as heavy as her daughter was ever going to get it seemed. But what Louise Belle didn’t know, was that for several years, Ophelia had been working very hard to keep control over what she was going to eat and not eat. Everything got written down in a notebook, she agonized over it, she thought about it constantly. Of course, it didn’t happen overnight, her disordered eating stemmed from her obsessive tendencies, from her control issues, it was one of so few things that she could gain some control over, and she needed the control.

There is not a single person on the face of this earth who is perfect. There are some narcissists who like to pretend that they are flawless, but they are just deluding themselves. Ophelia is well aware of her flaws, and while she doesn’t think about them endlessly, complaining about how dreadful she looks, she hardly considers herself to be pretty, let alone perfect. After a childhood fall, Ophelia had to have extensive surgery, leaving her back heavily scarred, along with several other less severe scars along her ribs and on her left wrist. Ophelia isn’t very fond of her nose, she’ll admit that, but she knows she can’t change it, it isn’t like she’d ever get plastic surgery, that would be ridiculous. And then there is her childish body, maybe it isn’t a flaw, but it makes her look about twelve. She is five feet tall, and weighs about ninety two pounds, she hasn’t got a single curve on her body, she does have long legs for her tiny frame, but it isn’t very noticeable, considering the fact that despite her long legs, she is still only five feet tall. Of course, Ophelia doesn’t dwell on her imperfections, because she really does believe that she was made the way she was for a reason, God made her that way, and therefore she has accepted it, and tries to love herself, in an un-vain kind of way. But it doesn’t really work most of the time, she’s too self conscious sadly.

All in all Ophelia Belle is a unique looking girl, she is not a conventional beauty, nor does she want to be one. She isn’t sultry or sexy by any stretch of the imagination, but she is striking. She is blonde, but not ditzy, she has pretty eyes, but they are rather flat when you look into them, surprisingly flat really. She doesn’t express emotion through them, she thinks it is kind of silly, no one needs to know what she’s thinking unless she wants them to, but it isn’t like she could even begin to know how to convey feelings through her eyes. She is small in stature, something she has grown to like, despite the drawbacks of being small, it allows her to disappear easily, to slip away into the background, and no one usually notices, there isn’t anyone looking for her. She doesn’t care much about her appearance really, she was brought up to be modest, to only care about the way she looked for hygiene purposes, not to impress people, she doesn’t wear makeup ever, she doesn’t dress sexily, she doesn’t even own a single pair of heels. She is a fan of looking natural, and if that bothers other people, that is their problem, not hers.

but people say I look like , clemence poesy
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but I'd rather wake up beside you
and breathe that ol' familiar smell,

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I love, moonlight. trees. black coffee. listening to opera music. thinking. early mornings. sunscreen. musicals. silent films. riding in trains. brushing her teeth. counting things. keys. cold showers. doing the laundry. hard wood floors. watermelon. tea. vintage cars. old fashioned names. hats. weddings. board games. history books. cash registers. people watching. organization. zoos. grapes. being pale. laughing. being in good company. her brother. her mother. books of any kind. church and church functions. cooking. talking about interesting subjects. sewing. knitting. small children. any and every kind of charity work. analog watches and clocks. old chivalry. museums. riding her bicycle. going on walks. wandering aimlessly. school. knowing things. riding in cars. praying. the way she is. classical music. playing the piano. speaking french. citrus fruits. soup. reading anything. the internet. being religious. her small size. the idea of time. fairytales. zoos. spicy food. perfection. respect. homework. movies with happy endings. white walls. the color lavender. the smell of lemons. watching the news. doing something good. helping people who need it. pale colors. flat shoes. nature documentaries. old books. warm weather. misty rains. text books. woods. chemistry. hot chocolate. her short stature. vegetable juice. pretty things. fruit flavored lollipops. dreaming. calm rooms. running water. pretty things. folk songs. chapstick. lotion. thick socks. dresses. old westerns.
but I really despise, being alone. most people her age. idiots. sleazy men. romantic comedies. relationships. being lied to. being talked at. big cities. everyone she graduated with. forgiving and forgetting. open doors. environmentalists. leather sofas. scratchy sheets. small towels. high heels. nursing homes. fans. the sound of nylon on nylon. pointless drama. people who consider themselves grounded. toe socks. chocolate. the smell of sweat. apples. slippers. blinking lights. rap music. partying. sweater vests. booty shorts. short men. guys in skinny pants. fried chicken. sluts. side burns. facial hair. people who don’t feel the need to shower. skin tight anything. psycho bitches. bendy straws. sodas. being watched. hoop earings. taffy. popcorn. the sun, for the most part. growing older. the untraditional ideas about anything. portable telephones. feeling groggy. yoga. doing nothing. pizza. wine and champagne and alcohol in general. bomber jackets. wearing a watch. frizzy hair. remote controls. the color yellow. packing. things not being in their place. pda. one dollar bills. waiting for anything. getting lost. having to make her own descisions. pudding. low rise jeans. studio lighting. listening to other people sing. striped clothing. blunt cut bangs. suede. being late. people who ask too many questions. boring conversations. chairs without arm rests. feeling guilty. daylight savings time. crowds. smokers. druggies.
I personally think I'm pretty good at, Ophelia is an upstanding citizen, she is the kind of girl that parents want their children to meet and marry. Well that is what she seems like to the naked eye anyway. She volunteers at children’s hospitals, she works in soup kitchens, she goes to church and was homeschooled for most of her life. she is a smart girl, she is just the kind of person that any mother would be proud to welcome into the family. That being said, she is also more often than not the moral compass for those around her, and while they rarely follow her example, she is always there, waiting for the day that she makes a difference in someone’s life. Ophelia Belle really does think that she can help people, that she can fix their problems. But she ends up taking their burdens on as her own. She tries to be a good person, she avoids all sorts of things that most people her age couldn’t live without, she is a good girl, she really is. She is also pretty good about doing what she is told, that could be seen as either a plus or a minus, depending on how you look at it, but if you ask Ophelia to do something for you, she will do it.
though I should really work on , Ophelia is kind of afraid of other people. Pretty much everyone who is not in her family, and even then her parents and brother scar her from time to time. She doesn’t know how to act in normal social situations, she thinks about them and stresses about them constantly, it is all that she can think about. Because of this she tries to avoid people as best she can. She doesn’t go out, but because she works two jobs, both of which involve people, she is often found in the middle of a near breakdown, one that she seems to always hanging around her. Ophelia is distant, she doesn’t like to talk to people much, she is awkward, lacking in all social skills, she cares more about going to church than she does about most anything else. She is judgmental, though she would never admit it, she really is. She sees herself as a good example of how people should act, but she has found that she is pretty much the only person who acts that way, she is the only girl she’s ever met who is anything like her. And she doesn’t know if that is a good or bad thing. Ophelia tries, she really does, but oftentimes, she fails, and then just feels unbearable guilty.
people tend to tell me I'm ,

[/i][/size][/color] because, “I am not very in touch with the world. I know that. I am not deluding myself into thinking that I am like everyone one else. And I don’t want to be like them. I like myself just the way I am, I really do. I understand that to some people it might seem weird, but I just don’t feel comfortable in most situations involving other people. I grew up with just my family really, and they are still the only people that I really feel safe with, and even though I live with my brother, he is different now, it isn’t the same. I’ve tried in the past to connect to the world, but it never seems to work out. I don’t know how to convey my feelings to other people; I don’t know the way to hold a conversation with someone. I worry that they will think I'm strange, that they will not like me. It is easier not to even bother, it is lonelier of course, but it is safer. And while I hate being lonely most of the time, I would choose loneliness over awkwardness any day. I guess I will have to accept that I will never really be a part of this world.”
religious [/font] because, “I see nothing wrong with being considered religious. It is true, I was brought up in a religious family, one in which church played a big role in my life. I have always been a spiritual person and I plan on staying one. I don’t mind if other people aren’t, I could usually care less what beliefs one person or another has, but I must admit that I do get insulted when someone takes a swing at me, just because of my religion. If I do not judge you, you have no right to judge me. It is as simple as that in the long run, but people rarely think that way. My beliefs control most aspects of my life, I guess some people consider it to be stifling or controlling, but I don’t mind really, perhaps I am just used to it. But I like the stability that the church has given me, I like that I can feel comfortable with myself, it gives me a sense of peace. I try to follow most of the things I’ve learned from my religion pretty carefully, my parents put a good deal of effort into my religious education when I was younger, and it has stuck. Even here, I still go to church three times a week, no exceptions.”
obsessive [/font] because, “When I was younger, I started out with just a few rituals. They were nothing too big; they just sort of were ways for me to unwind, to feel better. I always felt better after them, but with time, they became a larger and larger part of my life. I hid them pretty well though; most people suspected nothing and those who did probably didn’t care enough to speak up. I have always gotten kind of obsessed about things, I won’t deny that. In high school I always strove to be the best in all of my classes, I worked harder than anyone I knew, because I needed the recognition, I wanted someone to acknowledge everything I’d worked for. And they did. Of course my classmates weren’t exactly thrilled by my perfection at school, and I was often the target of a bit of anger after a difficult test or when an assignment was due, and I was the only person who actually did it. I like things to be in their place, everything has a place, a specific role to play. Likewise I like the number four, things are always better when they are grouped in fours. In fact, when they aren’t grouped in fours, I get antsy, I can’t concentrate on anything else, it starts to take over.”
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but basically, I'm ,

“My name is Ophelia. I am not like most other girls my age.”

Her father had wanted her to be named Mary, after the mother of Jesus. He thought it would be a good reflection of everything he wanted his daughter to amount to in this world. Her mother, at the last minute changed the plans and named her Ophelia. But the reflection of the name Mary, stuck. Purity is something that most people lose after a while. They get bored with it, want to try out something new for a while, they usually don’t go back. But for Ophelia Belle, purity is something that she can hide behind. She is the epitome of a good girl, she doesn’t sleep around, and she has never slept around, and is never planning on it. But this obsession with keeping pure, keeping chaste has slowly begun to take over her life. When she was younger, her parents made sure that she understood the perils of ‘slut-dom’ and now, even at twenty, she can’t forget what they said. Those lessons were drilled into her head day after day and they became creed in their own right.

Ophelia is scared of men; she is scared of anything to do with them. And while she knows that one day she is going to get married, the idea scares her almost to the point of a breakdown.
Ophelia was homeschooled until high school. On the first day of her freshman year she was that girl, the one who was wearing clothes only a Mormon school teacher would think about donning, the one who knew the answer to every question, but when it came to interacting with people her own age, she failed miserably. She just couldn’t do it. From the first day of her life, her parents tried to block out the evils of the outside world, she and her brother couldn’t and didn’t watch the television, ever. They didn’t have a computer in their house; their parents didn’t read the newspaper. The Belle family lived in perfect seclusion from everything that they saw as bad. And in doing so, the world of Ophelia grew smaller and smaller until it contained only her four person family, church, and her school work. Her sheltered upbringing is something that she had yet to lose, not that she would want to even if she could; it is her security blanket, the thing that makes her feel comfortable. But it makes even the most ordinary of situations awkward. She doesn’t know things, slang, anything about relationships or men, and when she asks, people usually just laugh and think she’s kidding. But she isn’t, she honestly doesn’t know. It is the kind of innocence that could so easily be taken advantage of.

She had one friend as a child, her brother. She considered her parents friends, and then there were the kids she went to church with. Growing up, that was enough. It was all she needed. She has told herself, time and time again that all she needs is her family, they are the most important people in her life, the only ones she needs. But even Ophelia knows that isn’t true. Maybe if she wasn’t so afraid of everyone, things would be different. Maybe then she wouldn’t feel quite so alone all of the time. But the way she was raised combined with her slightly stifling social phobias have caused her to try to separate herself from the world as much as possible, but even then, even after she has cut herself off from everyone her age, from the normal things that normal people do, part of her wants nothing more than to join them. Ophelia doesn’t understand herself in that way. She is ashamed of it, that her family isn’t enough, that she wants something that can so easily be associated with sin, but she can’t help it, it is human nature to want other people. And Ophelia is only human. Her loneliness is crippling, but usually she can delude herself into thinking she is okay. Usually.

Things have to be in pairs. It is simple, just like everything has a place, a use, a reason. And when people ignore those rules, Ophelia freaks out. Her control-freak tendencies started when she was rather young, her parents didn’t mind, she kept her room spotless, the bookshelves were always organized, everything in the entire house was perfectly lined up, straight and in descending height order. They were too oblivious to notice the other changes in their daughter, the ones the crept up slowly. She washes her hands four times before she can leave the bathroom; everything has to be touched with both hands, both feet, both sides of her body, four times. She picks things up and puts them back down again, four times, before she can use them. She can’t sleep unless she has checked her room, unless everything is perfect, the way it is supposed to be. For these reasons, going into the outside world can be something…horrifying. Everything is dirty, tainted in one way or another, no amount of hand washing or prayers could save her out there, she is much more comfortable in her own home, where people don’t yell at her for opening and closing doors four times before she can walk through them. She feels so much safer at home.

Ophelia takes on the actions of others as though they were her own. And therefore, their guilt for their wrongdoings becomes hers as well. But Ophelia’s strict upbringing makes every guilty feeling that much worse, and things the normal person would overlook, cause her to agonize for days. To a certain extent, Ophelia really thinks that she can fix people, make them better, more like the way her family raised her to be. And while this leads her to be slightly judgmental, it also causes her to try and fix quite a few people who don’t want to be fixed. It is one of the few forms of human contact that she can stand; only no one else seems to be able to stand it with her. She sees the actions of others and makes them her own. Their feelings, their thoughts get reflected and distorted in her mind. In this way Ophelia sometimes thinks that she understands other people, and always she learns the hard way that she really doesn’t understand a thing about them. She only thinks she does, and when she tries to connect, on this strange level, it doesn’t work out. So she has learned to wallow in their guilt alone, atoning for their sins, begging for their forgiveness.

She has always been slightly, breakable. Her mental state was never one of rock-like stability. Ophelia is the kind of girl who could quite easily be destroyed, corrupted and then broken, in a matter of minutes she really could be reduced to nothing more than a sobbing mental-case on the floor. So perhaps for that reason alone it is good she rarely interacts for more than a few minutes with the outside world, because they could so easily break her, without even trying. Her fragile mental state has always been that way, she was never exposed to anything as a child, her entire world had been created by her parents, the controlled everything she saw, everything she heard, everything she knew, and because of this, she was left rather delicate. She is not insane, she has just been so sheltered that really any amount of exposure to the other side of life is something that would just overwhelm her; for example, while some girls can easily just sleep around, that is the kind of thing that would cause Ophelia to breakdown. It is only a matter of time before she snaps though, before something happens or someone does something that causes the poor girl to break completely, and that is the kind of thing that just can’t be fixed.

Despite the fact that most people see her as this wholesome, good girl, and the fact that she is perhaps one of the few people on this earth who can really be considered pure, Ophelia Belle is hollow. There is nothing inside of her, no emotion, no feeling. She doesn’t understand normal human emotions, she knows what it is like to feel guilty, she knows what her parents called happiness, but it is all empty. Ophelia doesn’t know what love feels like, or how you really know if you are friends with someone. She has never felt desire or lust or anger or greed or envy, she is lacking all of them. Her parents wanted it to be that way; they wanted her to be in a separate world, one where the usual emotions, the ones that destroy the lives of other people on a daily basis, didn’t exist. And they succeeded. They made their daughter empty, emotionless, unable to connect with other people, unable to relate to the simplest of feelings. She lacks empathy; she doesn’t know how to feel for other people. In recent years she has seen some of these emotions in movies, on the streets, read about them in books, and she has tried to understand them, but she can’t, they just don’t make any sense to her.

“Honor thy father and mother.” It says it in the bible, so Ophelia does it. She has always been that dutiful daughter, the good one, the girl who does what she is told without question. In high school, it led to her having the reputation of quite the brown-noser, but she didn’t do it on purpose, she grew up being told that it was necessary, that when an elder told her to do something she did it. It was something that went without question, it was a fact and Ophelia accepted it. Because, hand in hand with her obedient manner, was her absolute belief of everything her parents told her. Had her parents told her to throw herself off of a bridge, she would have done it. Ophelia relies heavily on the direction of other people; she doesn’t know how to run her own life. And it is here that her parents gave Ophelia her greatest flaw, or the one that will most likely lead to her downfall, she can so easily be swayed, corrupted. All it would take was a little work, and just getting her to trust you. She would do anything that was asked of her, automatically.

Ophelia is gullible. She will believe anything you tell her. It isn’t even that she even thinks about what she has just been told and thinks, “Gee, even though that is positively impossible, I think I will believe it anyway.” No, she just was brought up to believe and accept everything her parents said, and it has spread to everyone else. That and the fact that she is so starved for human attentions that even one simple phrase becomes something sort of magical to her. She’d feel bad not believing it, lest she accuse someone, even just mentally, of lying. After all who is she to say what someone has and hasn’t done what they think and don’t think? But on the flip side, Ophelia is hardly what one would consider trusting. She doesn’t really trust other people’s motives, and while she is secretly thrilled when someone talks to her, she always has to question their motives. Maybe they are just mocking her, trying to make her feel comfortable before doing something horrible, giving her a false sense of security. Or course, this is a severe paranoia that she likes to pretend is normal. Then again, Ophelia is a big fan of ‘pretending it is normal’.

Perhaps it is simply because she never learned how to be a warm person, she never had people to be warm towards, but Ophelia is not exactly a nice person. She would never do anything to hurt anyone, but she isn’t sweet or nice. She is distant, she’s kind of cold. And whether it is a defense mechanism or not, it is a fact, Ophelia cannot be really nice to people, she doesn’t understand how to be. And what’s more, when people are too nice to her, it kind of scares her a little bit. She can’t think of a reason why they should be nice, why they should be trying so hard to make a good impression on her, it isn’t like she’d like them any less if they acted real, in fact she usually has a harder time being around people who are too nice, they really do scare her. It is abnormal, yes, to be afraid of nice people, but what could you expect from a girl like Ophelia? She was brought up in such a small world, one in which religion was everything; there were no people for her to be nice to. She already knew her family, and while she was always respectful and good, she wasn’t nice, she was silent. She didn’t have to impress them with her niceness, her obedience mattered much more. That being said, Ophelia is a good person, a misunderstood and naive one, but a good person all the same.

If for some strange reason, you decided that you’d like to be friends with Ophelia, you’d have a hard time doing it. And it isn’t just because she is kind of distant, and because she doesn’t trust people. It is because she makes herself rather elusive. Not purposely or anything, she didn’t wake up one day and decide to become mysterious, she doesn’t like that she’s been described as mysterious either, or that several people have tried to get to know her just because they want to see what makes Ophelia Belle tick. She just doesn’t like letting the whole world know everything about her, not that she could even begin to understand everything about herself, let alone explain it to anyone else. She finds it easier to be detached from the rest of the world, even if all she really wants is to become a part of it, she is far too scared of everything and everyone there that she couldn’t really ever do it. So she has contented herself with being just separate from everyone and everything else. Ophelia is well aware of the fact that she could probably never be like all those girls she sees, and while she’s accepted it; part of her laments it. And because of that, she just closed the world out, out of sight, out of mind, right?

Ophelia is childish, plain and simple. She has the mind of a small child quite a lot of the time, she thinks like a little girl, she is hardly mature and yet she isn’t particularly immature either. She is much more comfortable around children than she is around people her own age, it isn’t just because she doesn’t understand anything about people her age; it is because children are still good. Children have yet to do some of the horrible things that her age group participates in on a regular basis. Ophelia can talk with kids and they don’t judge her for being a little different, they don’t make fun of her for her little routines. Maybe it is also because she didn’t really have the conventional childhood, hers was hardly what one would consider a childhood at all in fact, that she has clung to the ideals of a little girl. Or maybe it is because she was never exposed to what she is supposed to do as an adult, she just doesn’t know. For all of those reasons, Ophelia tends to stick to children when she is craving human contact. And if you ever took the time to listen to the way she speaks, watched her mannerisms, you would realize that they are all, at their core, childish, in the saddest of ways.

Maybe the strangest thing about Ophelia, with all of her awkwardness and her being unbearably shy most of the time, is the way she carries herself. Something that, in truth is not usually considered a personality trait, but for Ophelia it really is. She is graceful, in a bizarre and unsettling kind of way. She is the kind of girl who should fall over her feet, and who should trip over everything and nothing at all. She isn’t supposed to carry herself like she is some kind of queen, isn’t that a little bit vain of her? She can’t help it; it is just the way she has always been. Perhaps that is why sometimes it takes people a few minutes before they realize that she is a little different from most twenty year old girls, not until she opens her mouth for the most part. But even then, she is eloquent, while her speech can be slightly pretentious or even childish at times, she has a strange sort of grace about her, it clings to her and she to it. Ophelia, to a certain extent feels like it is almost the only thing that connects her to the real world, something that is unexpected from her.

She is a smart girl. Her parents made sure of that, they made sure that she studied almost nonstop, that she took her schooling more seriously than any other girl her age should. When she was homeschooled, everything was done with a sort of perfection that was unnerving, when she was in high school she was at the top of every class. It wasn’t effortless intelligence, like how some people have. It was totally deliberate; she tried so hard, so unbelievably hard to be perfect at everything in everything that anything less than perfect was unacceptable, to both Ophelia and her parents. While she may be incredibly book smart, you know the type, who can pull the most random histories and details out of thin air, make connections to anything, has read any book you could possibly mention, she lacks street smarts in every way. Then again, that was probably already pretty obvious, the poor girl spent so much time and effort learning everything she could from books that any chance of her picking up some people skills in high school was lost, she failed, miserably when it came to that. So she hid behind her books, in a world that was concrete, where she understood everything, where everything was just exactly as it seemed.

We now come to the last bit of Ophelia Belle’s personality. She is cracking, slowly but surely, her little world is falling apart. The walls her parents constructed for her are crumbling, and no matter how hard she tries to put them back up again, to close her eyes and make everything all better, she can’t do it. She wants to escape, maybe just a little bit of her, but part of her, wishes more than anything else that she could just be normal, that she could leave everything about herself behind, start over again. But she couldn’t do it, she couldn’t let her parents down like that, she couldn’t destroy herself. She has deluded herself into believing that she will always be able to go on living the way she has been, that she can really change people, make the world better. But she can’t, and one day she will have to learn that, the hard way probably. So while she can, Ophelia is hiding behind her little walls, keeping herself wrapped up in her little world, but she is slipping, everything she’s believed for so long, everything she thinks and feels, it is all becoming less clear, nothing is as it was. Everything is changing.

PURE. OBSESSIVE. CONTROLLING. AFRAID. SHELTERED. CRACKING. INTELLIGENT. UNCOMFORTABLE. AWKWARD. MODEST. TIMID. NERVOUS. GULLIBLE. RELIGIOUS. READER. UNTRUSTING. LOYAL. BABY. TIRED. GRACEFUL. SAD. REVERENT. COLD. QUIET. GROUNDED. LONELY. GUILTY. WISTFUL. COMPOSED. FAKE. OPTIMISTIC. CONFUSED. HOPEFUL. FRAGILE. TIRED. HOLLOW. SUPERFICIAL. JUDGMENTAL. FORGETFUL. YEARNING. CHASTE. NONDESCRIPT. ELUSIVE. TRANQUIL. SUBMISSIVE. ETHICAL. WORRIED. PRETENDING. CONSIDERATE. DUTIFUL. PAINED. MOROSE. TASTEFUL. GOOD. SLIPPING.

[/blockquote]

[ophelia belle]

I never thought you could leave me,
I figured I was the one ,

[/size]
^*[/size] background story - - - - - [/blockquote][/right]

I came from, Garden City, Alabama

[/b]? [/ul]
well my father .. ,

[/b][/size][/font][/color] John Thomas Belle.
coming in at , forty-nine
he supported us by , doing anything that paid.
all in all, he's pretty , complex. “There is no one word, or one phrase to describe my father. He is a hard worker, but sometimes he gets caught up in other things. He tried very hard while I was growing up to make sure that we had enough money to care for the family. He has very strong morals, and I respect him for that. In all honesty I didn’t talk much to him. He was closer to my brother when we were younger and then after he left, my father pretended that he didn’t exist, like my brother was never there. And as much as I love my dad, for being my father, I could never forgive him for that, for making it seem like we were just three of us in the family. He kind of scares me from time to time, not that he’d ever do anything to hurt me, but he is just very forceful in his ideas. He is stubborn, and doesn’t like to have people cross him, he has his own ideas about the world and in his home, his word is creed. My father tried very hard, maybe too hard. And while we are not close, I respect him for the good things he’s done, and I have tried to forgive him for the bad.”[/ul]
onto my mother ,

[/b][/size][/font][/color]Louise Greenly Belle.
coming in at , forty-eight.
she helped too, by , being a housewife.
in the end she's quite ,distant. “My mother was my world for so long. She meant everything to me, and I to her. But my father didn’t like her doting upon me that much, so she didn’t. But I shadowed her every move. Everything I learned I learned from her. She grew up in a world very different from my own, she was like a princess, I’ve never met her parents, but I’ve heard about them, and they sound wonderful. But they are both dead now. My mother changed, I think, to please my father. I don’t really think that she was always the way she is, sometimes, my mom seems to change, you can see it for a moment, in her eyes, and there is a flash of something. But I guess that is just me being silly. My mother raised my brother and me to be good people, I know she missed him after he left, though she never mentioned it, I could tell. Leaving my mother was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and there isn’t a day that I don’t think about her. I wonder if she is thinking about me. I hope she is, I miss her, I really do.”[/ul]
and then they had kids ,

[/b][/size][/font][/color]Johnny Belle, twenty-four.[/ul]
then it was time for my own ,

[/b][/size][/font][/color]none.[/ul]
and my one and only pet(s) , none.
the love life , Ophelia Belle is not one for romance. It was never in the cards for her, her parents made sure of it. From her first few moments on earth she was sheltered away from everyone who was not a member of her church or in her immediate family. The only boy she knew when she was younger was her older brother, and even though she grew up in back woods Alabama, her family was hardly that country. In fact she didn’t really know anyone her age until she started at high school. And even then she was so awkward, so socially unexplainable that there was no way she’d ever get a boyfriend. Not that she really wanted one anyway, I mean, she knew that she was going to get married one day, that was a given, but she wasn’t going to date in high school. And even if she had wanted to, her parents wouldn’t have let her. They probably would have just locked her in her room, forbidden her from talking to the boy in question, and Ophelia would have accepted it. So perhaps it was best that she never really fell in love with any boys she went to school with, because nothing could have or would have ever come from it. Of course, Ophelia has thought about liking someone, or being in love, but the way in which she thinks about it, makes it seem so clinical. She sees things in black and white. She is already lacking normal human connections; romance is hardly the first step one takes into the real world. Ophelia is a virgin, if that wasn’t already obvious enough, she is planning on saving herself for marriage and she isn’t ashamed of it. She’s been mocked because of her abstinence, nothing more than expressions of surprise and in most cases confusion. But to Ophelia is it almost like an attack. She doesn’t like people questioning her beliefs on the subject. Her strict religious upbringing has left her rather judgmental when it comes to other people’s choices. She tries to remain indifferent but she can’t help it sometimes, people just seem to be flushing their lives down the drain for a few minutes of lust. And that won’t get you anywhere. That being said, Ophelia is a cynic when it comes to love, she doesn’t believe in true love, she thinks that some people are compatible, and therefore they can love each other and get married and live happily. But she doesn’t think that those movie type romances can exist in real life. She doesn’t think that there is a prince charming waiting for her, she just wants to find someone who can accept her, and she doesn’t think that that is really too much to ask for. But she is currently a little too busy trying to figure out what she is going to do with herself to attempt to find someone to ‘be’ with, and she is too young. And she would like to be on speaking terms with her parents before she marches down the aisle.
& the good and the bad,
Louise Greenly wasn’t supposed to fall in love with a boy like John Belle. She was the only child of a wealthy businessman from Richmond, Virginia and his wife, a novelist. She was supposed to marry a good boy from Virginia, move into a big house in Richmond, have children, and be happy. That was the life her parents had planned for her. They had sent her to all the best school they could, she was well rounded, she played tennis spoke fluent French and was senior class president. She went to UVA, and was studying childhood education, she wanted to teach French, she wanted to travel the world, she wanted so many things and all of them seemed so obtainable. Her life was really quite perfect. She was perfect. John Belle was not. He was one of four children from a relatively poor family from Garden City, Alabama: population 564. He was at UVA on scholarship, studying theology. And while he was hardly the kind of boy that Louise’s parents wanted her to fall in love with, he was a charmer, he told her the things she wanted to hear and Louise was naïve enough to believe everything he said. In a matter of months, the poor girl was totally in love, and while John Belle was not the type to love, he was perhaps affectionate towards Louise. Controlling, but affectionate; it always seems to start that way. They want you to make subtle changes, John told Louise she didn’t like the way she dressed, she showed too much skin, so she stopped dressing that way. He told her he didn’t want her to talk to her male friends anymore, so she didn’t. He didn’t like her going to parties, so she stopped going out except with him. He told her that it was because he loved her so much that he couldn’t stand to think of her with anyone but him, John wanted to spend all of his time with Louise. That is what he said, and she believed him. Her parents noticed the changes in their daughter, and naturally, grew a little worried, and when she was home over spring break her junior year, her mother forbade her from ever speaking to John Belle again. Louise begrudgingly accepted her mother’s order, for the longer she was away from John, the more she realized how controlling he was. So when she returned, and informed him she never wanted to see him again, Louise thought that was that. She went back to wearing her old clothes, doing her old things, hanging out with her old friends, but John had other ideas. He followed her around, tried to make he see the error in her ways, he begged her forgiveness, promised to change, and Louise, foolish as ever, took him back. To her parent’s dismay, but there was nothing that they could do about it but sit back and watch their daughter’s life get destroyed. She was hooked. One year later, three weeks after graduation, they were married. John and Louise Belle, a couple that really did seem happy, and maybe they were. For a little while at least. Louise had planned on moving to Richmond and getting a job as an elementary school teacher there, but John didn’t like the city life, so the young couple moved back to Garden City.

Louise was unhappy. But she didn’t say anything. John didn’t want her to work, so she didn’t. She stayed at home in their small house, sitting and cleaning for endless hours while John went to work, doing whatever he could get paid to do. They went to church; something Louise had never been too fond of doing, but something that mattered to John. She regretted marrying him, but was too proud to leave, or maybe she was too scared to. A year after they were married, Louise gave birth to their first child, a boy, named John Thomas Belle Jr. Affectionately called Johnny by his mother. Louise clung to her child, transferring all of her needs for love to it, babies love unconditionally. She spent every waking moment doting on her baby boy, until John told her that she was spoiling him. Louise was slowly slipping away, her willpower, her once vivacious personality, were disappearing. So she loved her son distantly. He was brought up to be like his father. Religious, he went to church with his parents three times a week, if he cried or made a fuss; he was punished, even as a small child. It wasn’t acceptable. The years passed slowly for Louise. Her husband barely made any money, but she wasn’t allowed to work. Her entire world revolved around her son, she hadn’t had the time to make friends in Garden City, and she hadn’t been able to visit her parents. She was very unhappy, but she said nothing. When Johnny was old enough to start pre-school, John decided that he didn’t want his children to go to school, he wanted them to grow up protected from the evils of the outside world, so Louise was going to homeschool him, and any future children they had. Four years after the birth of her son, Louise discovered she was pregnant again, and part of her wanted to miscarry, the make the baby go away, to save it, but her selfish tendencies wanted the love. Ophelia Jane Belle was born on January 2nd, 1988. The baby girl who was supposed to be named Mary Elizabeth, but when the doctor asked what the name was, Louise couldn’t do it; she named her Ophelia, poor thing, poor pitiful girl. John was less than thrilled, but he bit back his anger, for the time being.

From her first moments on earth, Ophelia was sheltered. Her mother tried to shelter her from her father, her father from the evils of the world. She was a tiny child, pale, unsmiling, and fragile. She looked as though she would break in two at any moment. Her tiny limbs and body were dainty in a way that was abnormal. She was a silent baby. Her mother fretted over this, often willing her baby to scream, to cry, to do anything just so long as she made some noise, proved to Louise that she had some kind of personality, that she wasn’t already bland, a shell of a person. But never once did the little girl cry out. John Belle told his wife not to hold her that much; he said it spoiled children, being held all the time, and that if she cried, which she never did, that she should just be left to cry. No need to indulge them, children should be taught from the beginning that they need to respect their parents. Ophelia’s bedtime stories were straight from the bible. Read unflinchingly by her father to the entire family, who sat unmoving in the tiny living room, Ophelia in her Moses basket on the floor, Jonny sitting at his mother’s feet, Louise staring blankly at her husband. It was around this time, that she finally broke, she stopped trying to challenge her husband, she stopped trying to do what she liked, she sunk back into her roll of housewife and mother and made it her everything. Ophelia never really knew her mother. Johnny forgot about her, she became like a shadow, wandering about in the background of everything, never letting herself come to light. The tiny blonde baby girl grew up in this way, silent, religious, and detached.

By her third birthday, Ophelia was already well indoctrinated into her father’s way of thinking. She was the good daughter she was supposed to be, she did her chores, said her prayers, listened to her parents, and did her little school assignments. She thought she was happy, her parents told her that she was lucky to live in such a good family, they told her about the starving children in Africa, they told her that there were people who had such hard lives, and that she was very fortunate to be there, safe in her little house in Garden City, Alabama. Every night for years afterwards, her prayers would end with a thank you, for living in Garden City, and a prayer for the starving children. They were one of the few things she knew about the world beyond her little house, her little church. Growing up she had one real friend, her brother. Ophelia looked up to Johnny more than anyone in the world, she loved him, more than she even loved her parents, what Johnny said was like magic to her, he was the more interesting person on earth to her, she wanted to be exactly like him. Something her father was less than thrilled about. How was she supposed to grow up and be a good, God-fearing young lady if her role model was her older brother? So John Belle made a point of giving them other things to do. Ophelia spent any free time she had with her mother, helping her to cook, clean things, she learned how to use a sewing machine, how to do all sorts of home economics type things. And Jonny spent all his free time with his father, listening to endless sermons and reading book after book after book about God, Religion, and Fundamentalist Ideals. But he was hardly interested in any of it. Ophelia, on the other hand, kind of enjoyed her time spent with her mother; it was like a giant game of house to her, where all the make believe was real though. Of course she didn’t have much free time, even from an early age she spent a good deal of time doing school things, and then there was church which took up half a day three times a week. So she looked forward to her afternoons and evenings with her mother, a little apron tied around her waist, standing on a kitchen chair as she helped to chop carrots.

Ophelia was six when she fell out of the tree in her backyard. She had seen her brother climb it one day, and decided that it seemed like a good idea, so she waited until her mother had gone back inside, they were hanging up the laundry to dry, and Louise Belle hurried back inside for a minute. Ophelia had never exactly climbed a tree, but she figured it had to be easy enough, and it was. And in a few minutes she had reached the top, and while it was an invigorating feeling, the decent seemed horrible. She began slowly, but lost her footing, and the still tiny, still fragile little girl crashed to the ground. By the time her mother came back outside, just two or so minutes later, her daughter was lying unconscious on the ground, her body twisted and bent awkwardly. The ambulance arrived soon afterwards and she was taken to the Garden City hospital, and then airlifted to Birmingham. Her back was broken in four places, both wrists her fractured, she had broken a rib and her left leg. Ophelia looked like she had gotten thrown down a flight of stairs and beaten to within an inch of her life. She spent three weeks in the hospital in Birmingham, the first time she’d ever been out of Garden City. Her mother didn’t leave her side, but she said nothing, Louise just stared blankly at her daughter, it had been her fault, everyone knew it. Everyone whispered it behind her back. Even her own husband called her a bad mother, and perhaps it was true, there was her daughter, lying unmoving on a hospital bed, her limbs awkwardly pinned to her sides. Her father prayed over her, and her brother told her stories. But Ophelia said nothing, she just laid there. When she was finally released, allowed to go back home, though still heavily bandaged and wearing most casts that she knew what to do with. Her mother wanted to dote on her, to bring her soup in bed, to take care of her. But John was against that idea, he said that she didn’t need to be babied, she was a big girl, and her wounds would heal in good time, with God’s help, and bringing her soup would just get the sheets dirty. So Louise consented, and while Ophelia spent the next seven or so months confined to her bed, she was always entertained in some way. If it wasn’t her brother coming to keep her company, it was her mother telling her stories, little things from her own childhood. Or her father, who had moved the nightly bible sessions to Ophelia’s room, and three times a week, the poor girl was strapped into her wheelchair and pushed to church.

When she was finally freed from her casts, Ophelia feel right back into her old life, she was homeschooled every day, including Saturday, until four in the afternoon, and then she helped her mother around the house until six, when they started to make dinner, which started at seven and ended at eight, she took a bath, listened to her father read from the bible for a half an hour and by eight forty five, she was in bed. And the next day it began again. Unless there was church, in which case they left the house at three in the afternoon and got home at eight. She was comfortable in this life, even though it was beyond predictable, even though it kept the entire family totally secluded from the outside world, the Belle family was content. They did the same things at the same times. John Belle went to work, which changed every now and again, whatever would pay him and not fire him, which most of his jobs ended up doing, as he was, too controlling, blew up at his managers, and so he usually ended up doing odd jobs, gardening, delivering messages, selling things door to door. Every once in a while, Louise would suggest that she go get a job teaching at one of the local schools. But John pointed out that if she taught at the school, who would raise the children? They would have to go to public school, and that wasn’t acceptable. So eventually Louise just stopped trying, and devoted herself fully to teaching her children everything she could. And so the days passed, and the weeks passed and the months, in the same way, the same patterns, the same thing; nothing changed really. Except for John going from job to job, every time he promised that this was the big deal, this time he’d make a lot of money, he’d keep the job for good. And every time, a few weeks, maybe months later, he started over again.

Her strange habits, her little routines started around the age of nine. She started small, she would match things into pairs, make sure that everything had a mate. She’d wash her hands really thoroughly, but just once, she’d make sure doors were really shut. But it slowly got worse and worse, if she couldn’t put things into pairs, her stomach would hurt, she’d count things to calm herself down, anything and everything, she’d just count it. Numbers made her feel better, she understood numbers. As she slowly became more and more obsessive about everything, her parents turned the blind eye. Her father said it was good she was being hygienic and organized, and her mother couldn’t accept that there was something wrong with her daughter. The control felt good though, Ophelia had never had control of anything before, she’d never made her own decisions, and she’d never even picked out what clothes she was going to wear, or brushed her own hair. And with each new routine, she gained a little bit of control over her life. But the more control she gained, the more obsessed she became with her routines, the more pain she was in when she missed one, the harder she had to try and hide them. And she got pretty good at it, not that there were many people to hide it from, her parents ignored it, and her brother was too busy being a boy to pay attention to his sister’s downward spiral. Her control issues grew with every passing day, like father like daughter, she’d learned from the best. But even though she liked to be in control, she was submissive, she did what she was told, and had to find other ways to get her little bit of control.

Between the ages of ten and fourteen, Ophelia led what she and her family considered to be normal. She did what she was told without a second thought, it wasn’t like she’d ever said she wouldn’t do anything before. It had never occurred to her that she could possibly cross her parents. To her, their word was as good as that of her minister, it was something that was to be taken and accepted. In the little time she spent outside the safety of her home, she watched other families closely, she watched their children interacting with the parents, the fighting, and more often than not the affection. It was a kind of thing she’d never experienced herself, and she couldn’t tell if she wanted to or not. She once tried to hug her mother, but Louise remained stiff in her daughter’s embrace, despite the fact that she had been brought up in a world of such love, but she had forgotten about it by that point. After that failed attempt at affection, Ophelia decided that it wasn’t worth it, trying to be like other families. She loved her parents in the only way she knew how, by respecting them, silently and dutifully. Her brother Johnny was not so willing to stay back in the world his parents had created, and when he was sixteen, his sister Ophelia had just turned twelve, he left home for good. Ophelia was beside herself, but there was no one for her to confide in. Her brother had been her only friend, and he had abandoned her. Louise dealt with her grief in her own way, by pretending it didn’t exist. And John just forgot about his son, disowned the boy and made his family into one of just three people, mother, father, and tiny, silent daughter. All family pictures with the four of them were taken down, only one of them, one that Ophelia hid from her parents under her mattress, where she kept it hidden for years. She never really got over her brother leaving, because he really did, abandon her, the only friend she’d ever really had left her, he’d run off without her. But her parents just forgot about it, and so Ophelia tried to follow suit, she was good enough at lying to herself that it worked. For a while at least, and by the time that it really caught up with her, it was too late. The two years after her brother left, and before she started at a real school were as close to before as they could be. Her parents grew more protective of Ophelia. She wasn’t allowed out of their sight, even at church she was seated between her parents and not allowed to wander or go talk to the other children, she spent more and more time studying, perfecting herself, and more and more time with her rituals. Her parents didn’t notice, they had never really noticed her anyway, as long as she did what she was told and didn’t cause trouble, it was all fine.

When she was informed she was going to start at a public school, Ophelia felt an impending sense of doom fall upon her. It was only at the local high school, it wasn’t like they lived in some big city, one in which people were sophisticated. They were just all of the kids from Garden City, Alabama. Her parents had decided long before that their children should go to real high school; Johnny had been going to one before he left, the months before her first day at a real school were horrifying. She didn’t know what she was supposed to do. She begged her parents to let her stay home, but her father wouldn’t hear it. It was the only time in her entire life that she tried to change her parents’ minds. Louise almost consented, but John was adamant, after all, it had been Louise’s idea in the first place that their children go to a high school; she couldn’t change her mind then because her little girl was crying. She couldn’t give into her daughter, that would make Ophelia think that she could get anything she wanted by crying. And so, Ophelia had to accept that she would have to go to school. The fourteen year old girl stood at four foot ten, she weighed eighty pounds, if that. She was too thin for her own good, hadn’t even begun to start going through puberty, wore clothes that no teenage girl would be caught dead in, i.e. those that her mother bought her, or worse, made for her. Her feathery blond hair went down to her lower back, and was usually worn in a braid; she was quiet, mousy, and socially awkward. Needless to say, high school was hardly what she thought it would be, or what her mother had hoped it to be. She was happy as long as she was in class, as long as she didn’t have to talk to anyone, she was fine. She liked school because of the classes, even though it was a tiny town, there was so much more to be learned at a school, there were things she had never even heard of, everything she could learn, she did. She swallowed books whole. She had finished reading most of her textbooks by the second month of school, her notes were meticulous, and her test scores perfect. She was any teacher’s dream child. Unfortunately, her happiness at school ended there. Homeroom was bad because it was assigned by last name, the few people she could sort of talk to were all in other rooms, she was alone in a room with fourteen other children, all of whom wanted nothing to do with the weird Ophelia. Lunch was worse. The tables were full of groups of friends, all of whom were less than willing to accept a girl like Ophelia into their world. That isn’t to say that some people didn’t try to welcome her in, but Ophelia didn’t know how to act around people her age. And when she resisted, they stopped trying. So she spent her lunch periods in the library, reading, as always.

High school got better as she got older, just because Ophelia began to accept that she would never be like other people, and while she made some decent friends, she never was able to connect with them on any level other than acquaintance. The summer before her sophomore year, Ophelia grew her last two inches, topping off at five feet tall, Ophelia was still one of the shortest people she knew, but she’d gained a little bit of weight, she was less scary skinny, and more, slender. Her mother allowed her to cut her long hair a little shorter, to her shoulder blades, and she slowly was able to change the things she wore, a little bit. She was still modest, still unable to have a conversation with a man without wanting to slip into the shadows. She excelled in school; she was that girl who everyone kind of hated, because she answered every question, because she asked if there was homework when teachers forgot to assign it, because she killed the curve on every test. Ophelia was hardly the kind of girl who flaunted her grades, but she became slightly sought after. People began to ask for her help on assignments. And for the attention, she was willing to do their assignments for them. She wrote papers, read books, did projects, all because she was starved for human contact. She didn’t see it as cheating; it was just helping people out. At home, her life was much the same that it always had been. She went to church, she did her chores, and she helped her mom. She didn’t go out at night, she never went to parties or did anything that anyone would consider fun. She was a wet blanket if there had ever been a wet blanket, but she never even put herself out there to extinguish the fun. A fact that most of her classmates were happy with, but most of them, by the end of their sophomore year, felt bad for the girl. They all knew about her strange family life, about her brother just leaving. They knew that no one had heard from him in the four years since he’d left. It was hard not to pity Ophelia Belle, even though she didn’t want anyone’s sympathy. She tried so hard at everything she did, but it was never good enough. She drove herself mad with work, with stress, and she hid it all from everyone. She was emotionless.
Ophelia’s last two years of high school were fine. She did her work, talked as little as she could to other people. She never put much thought into romance, not that anyone had ever put much interest into her either. She was hardly a catch, there were girls who were a good deal more fun than Ophelia, and who were way more willing to do usual high school romance stuff. Ophelia was horrified by some of the things she heard about. But she could hardly just ask her mother about it, even Ophelia, who told her parents everything, felt uncomfortable talking about such things with her mom, let alone her dad. So she pretended that they didn’t exist. And she did quite a good job of doing it. She spent her weekends volunteering at her church, at soup kitchens in neighboring towns, at the hospital. She did anything she could to fill her time, the time she didn’t spend studying or going to church, that is. And while she was happy to help other people, the unhappiness of it all stressed her out, her rituals got worse, more frequent and more necessary. And once again, her parents didn’t notice. She did her best to hide them from everyone, to pretend like she was just being a little obsessive, no one paid enough attention to her to notice anyway, and with her brother gone, there wasn’t any who would really care enough, if they had noticed. Her summers were a little harder, she worked as a secretary at her church, all of her paychecks went directly to her father, because as he put it, there was nothing she needed money for. Everything she needed her parents gave her, and anything she wanted, well that was greed. And greed was not something that her family accepted. She didn’t mind much, that she worked seven hours a day and got nothing to show for it. She spent six days of her weeks during the summers after sophomore and junior years at her church, answering the phone, typing up programs, sending out church emails, and running errands for anyone who needed something done. She had never really done anything interesting, she didn’t know much about the world outside Garden City, and she didn’t really want to. She was comfortable in her little world, with its little walls and the rules her parents had set down from day one. She had never known anything else, and she had no intention of living life another way. By the time graduation rolled around, Ophelia was hardly ready to graduate; she was valedictorian of her graduating class, which meant she had to give a speech. Something she agonized over for weeks, but when the time came to deliver her commencement address, someone, the always shy and always awkward Ophelia Belle, pulled it together. Her classmates and teachers alike were stunned. Her parents were sort of proud, as proud of their child as they could be without it being excessive. But upon graduating, Ophelia didn’t have anything to do. She wasn’t going to college; her father didn’t want her to. He said it wasn’t necessary, that girls didn’t need to go to university, he said it in front of his wife, who was horrified at the suggestion, but Louise had learned long ago, that there was no point in trying to change her husband’s mind. She was going to get a job at the library, and she’d live at home until she met a nice boy to marry. That is what she was supposed to do.

She was eighteen years old; she’d been working at her library for six months, when an unexpected visitor walked into the building. She recognized her brother immediately, even though she hadn’t heard from him in six years, he looked exactly the same to her, maybe a little bit taller, and older of course. But he also looked kind of haggard. He said he’d been living in California, that he was happy there, that he’d been waiting to come and see her for years, and that he thought she should come and live with him. Ophelia was trapped. Truth be told, she wanted nothing more than to follow her brother right back to California, but she couldn’t leave her parents, she didn’t know how to leave them. She told Johnny that she’d think about it, and he agreed, and said he’d call her at the library in a few weeks, he had a few things to do in the area, and then he’d go back to California. He told her that there was a world away from their parents. For the first time in her life, she stayed mum. She said nothing to her mother at all; she didn’t mention the bizarre visit. She began to wonder what it would be like to live without her parents, and how she could even begin to leave them. She organized everything she owned, which was not much, deciding that she could only bring one suitcase with her, if she was even going to leave. She had been raised to be such a good girl, never to cross them, to do everything they wanted her to do, but Ophelia loved her brother, she’d forgiven him in a moment. And while she was so scared of the world around her, she wanted nothing more than to be part of it. By the time her brother called her, a month later, she’d decided to leave home. She didn’t know what she’d tell her parents, or even how she’d get there, but she knew she was going to do it. So she planned it out, and she talked to her brother, everything was set out and ready to go. She went home from work one night in February, she was nineteen by then, and she acted like everything was normal. She let a letter on her desk, asking for forgiveness and telling them that she’d be going to church, she promised. She snuck out of her window, single suitcase in hand and walked to the bus station. She took a bus to Birmingham, and then got onto another one, the trip to California would take over a day, and it was the first time she’d ever done anything without her parents, the first time she’d ever left Alabama. She had imagined her life with her brother as something magical, but when she arrived, it was anything but. Johnny apartment was tiny, dirty, and shared with three other men. He drank too much, didn’t have a job, and to Ophelia’s horror, did drugs, lots of drugs. She wanted nothing more than to go running back home, but she knew her parents didn’t want her; they’d disowned her, just like Johnny. She didn’t get it, how her brother went out of control, how he’d become some kind of heroin addict, Ophelia didn’t know why he’d come to get her in the first place. And when she asked, he just shrugged it off, and said that he’d missed his sister. Ophelia looked at him, she believed him, she though, but she couldn’t look him in the eye anymore, she couldn’t look at him at all, lest she see his track marks again, or the remnants of cocaine in his nose. Ophelia was trapped. She lived in a disgusting apartment with four men, three of whom she didn’t know. She was the only one with a job, she had two actually; she worked at a bookstore during the day and waited tables at night. This is not what she had bargained for, but she had nowhere else to go. Ophelia Belle was not in her element, not at all. [/blockquote]

but I understand your sadness so
I guess I should just hold my tongue ,

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^*[/size] all about you - - - - - [/blockquote][/right]

^*

[/size] hello, I'm viola[/color]. I play ophelia belle[/color] and no one else[/color]. I myself have seen eighteen[/color]summers and I plan to see a lot more, living the good life up in eastern [/color]. I've been in this part of town for three or so years [/color], so I know the area pretty well. oh! and did I mention that valeee and kaynic[/color] told me about this island resort? she’s a gorgeous thing. stalk me? well, my aim is viola411[/color], my msn's nonexistent[/color], and my email's [e-mail][/color], . but, of course, you can always PM me. au revior!
i ♥ future blair. ^"[/size]

The bottle was at least a third of the way empty, her finger prints were smeared across the cheap glass. There was the usual cloud of smoke hanging around her head, drifting away from her every time a gust of wind blew in through the open window. Four stamped out cigarettes lay on the floor, remnants of their untimely demise scattering the marble tile. Her hair was messy, disheveled. She hadn’t washed it in at least two or three days, it was strange though, cleanliness was usually her thing. Then there were her clothes, a red dress, she had worn it to some black-tie event, it had cost much more than it was worth, but she bought it anyway. One heel was still strapped onto her foot, like a bear-trap; the other was only attached by the band around her ankle; it dragged behind her when she walked.

It was always the same really, and everyone knew it. She did, especially. Always played out in the same way, for eleven years it had been the same, people get used to habits. She looked towards the open window, the white curtains fluttering, making rustling sounds. Somewhere, maybe twenty miles, maybe less, her daughter slept, so did the rest of the world, her old friends, enemies, lovers, sisters, father, even people she barely knew, they were all fast asleep. It was too late to be awake, or perhaps the better word is early, it was too early for anyone else to be awake. She wasn’t sure, distance and time had little meaning to her then, as did most things.

She stood, despite her blood alcohol content being through the roof, and one foot being four and a half inches higher than the other; she was not shaky. Grace was one of her few remaining talents, it clung to her, and she to it; it was a small reminder of how she had been all those years ago. But in those few moments, when time and place had now meaning, the past didn’t seem all that far away. She walked the few paces to the mirror, and stared into it, still clinging onto her beloved bottle. It grew heavier and heavier with each second, despite the fact that it grew emptier and emptier, the clear liquid, her security blanket. It fell, slowly, slower than should be allowed. She watched the bottle’s path, unable to look away. As it smashed into the floor, she flinched, the liquid spattering up and onto her overpriced red dress, her legs, the wall, the floor, the base of the sink, and her single remaining shoe. It stung, she was in pain, it wasn’t even the stinging or the fact that she had lost good liquor, it burned, through the dress and the shoe and through her skin. Her security blanket was her thorn. She didn’t move, or attempt to stop the burning, it went away after a few seconds, and the dress could probably be cleaned, she hadn’t planned on wearing the shoes again. They didn’t matter.

She looked back at her face, the expression, the running mascara, the smeared lipstick, the blotchy complexion; all of it was so familiar. As though she wasn’t seeing herself, but a close friend for the first time in months, that sheer blissful moment of recognition, and then the ensuing guilt, because you forgot to contact them, the doubt, that they missed you at all, and the questions, have they changed? Have you changed? She stared at the face, and it looked back at her, blinking when she blinked, the mouth opened when hers did, the same tear, mirrored.

She leaned in closer, her nose nearly to the glass, a fog appearing every time she exhaled, and then disappearing as she breathed the air back in. Sometimes she pushed herself, seeing how long she could go without taking that breath, before her head started to spin even more and the little black dots began to dance across her vision; she never lased very long. She reached out, and placed her hand against the mirror, it was cold, and she hadn’t expected that. But the cold was comforting. She pressed the side of her face against it then, her breath quickening as she slowly started to cry. Usually, it was just a few tears after the initial shock of it all, but this time, sometimes was different. The sobs racked through her, and she winced, backing away from the mirror, and the face that looked out at her. She fell to the ground in a heap, of red silk dress and messy brown hair. She cried like that for a while, she didn’t know how long, but when she sat up, something was different. She glanced down, she was no longer wearing the red silk dress, the bathroom was different, the same one that had been hers at her parent’s old apartment. Scattered around the room were the telltale tests, there were six of them in total. She nearly screamed, as she counted them, ever so slowly. She had to be going insane, or maybe she already was, but there they were, and there she was, seventeen again.

‘I’ll have to tell him.’ She thought, over and over again, it was playing on repeat, occasionally changing languages, but the sentiment was all the same, ‘And my parents, what will I say to them…? They will, they will never forgive me.’ The thoughts were coming faster, and with each one, she felt worse, it was painful, all of those thoughts at once, and not one of them had any breath of hope about them, they were all the same. She was still seventeen, she stood up, and looked back around the room, all six of her tests were there, she didn’t have to look at them to remember what they said; this picture had been etched in her mind for the past eleven years, she remembered. As she stood she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror, it wasn’t her face, her reflection wasn’t seventeen. It was twenty eight. The messy brown hair, the running mascara, the slight crow’s feet from eleven years of stress and worry; she would get those fixed eventually, a quick shot of botox here and there, and she’d be young again. She knew she’d have to call him. She dialed carefully, pressing each number and pausing a moment in between. The voicemail picked up. Messages were so cold, so impersonal; that’s exactly how she wanted it.

The red silk dress was back, the single shoe, the nearly dried stains. She had been dreaming, or imagining things; she couldn’t be crazy. She ran her hands over her face, dragging the smeared mascara along with her fingers, her nails slowly digging into the skin. What was happening to her? Everything was bleeding together, past and present; now and then; here and there. The edges and partitions were breaking down and dissolving, she was loosing it. She slipped in and out, consciousness is relative. She stood up for the third time, or maybe the second, if the past had really just been an illusion. There was the face again, mirroring her every move. “It’s always the same.” She muttered at it, watching the lips move in time to her words, but the mirror face didn’t speak, it just mouthed. It wasn’t real, she was. ‘The mirror only reflects, it doesn’t see.’ Someone had said that to her once, she couldn’t remember who.

Time, consciousness, place: all of it is relative, all of it can be molded and shifted, she knew that. She believed it. She looked up, and brushed her hair out of her face, tucking it behind her ears. A small ray of sunlight came through the window, it would be day soon, and she had to go pick up her daughter, the driver would take her, and then maybe she and her daughter could go get lunch, or shop. Her daughter would say no. She pulled a toothbrush out of the cabinet, and stuck it in her mouth; she couldn’t even remember what she was doing. It took a moment, but she remembered. She stood, brushing her teeth in her bathroom, the remains of her night strewn across the floor, as they always were. The maid would come and clean it all up. It would be like it never happened, only a bad dream.

Aria turned to leave the room. “It’s always the same, isn’t it?”

(ooc: sorry about excessive length, i get carried away sometimes : D)
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[daisy van buren .]

WELCOME TO --
TIME TO GROW UP ,
* ophelia belle has been accepted .

• now that you've been accepted, please make sure you claim your celebrity face here before someone else comes along and snags them.
• if your character has a job, make sure to claim the position here.
• also, if you want your character to have a cell phone, msn, aim, or facebook please claim your names here and here before someone else steals the name / number.

xo. alexa

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