Post by HOLDEN DONNELLY on Sept 3, 2012 21:36:26 GMT -5
...holden michael donnelly*
* Carry on
My wayward son,
There will be peace
When you are done. *
[/size]* Carry on
My wayward son,
There will be peace
When you are done. *
...basics*
name...[/b][/size] Holden Michael Donnelly
nickname...[/b][/size] Just Holden is fine, thanks. His little sister called him Holdy. Call him that and he will murder you.
age...[/b][/size] 26
gender...[/b][/size] Male.
grade...[/b][/size] College graduate.
occupation...[/b][/size] Currently unemployed. He used to be an aspiring musician. Now he doesn’t really see the point in that.
hometown...[/b][/size] Elkins, West Virginia
sexuality...[/b][/size] What difference does it make? Who in their right mind would date a guy in a wheelchair? However, prior to his incapacitation, he tended to favor the ladies. Doesn’t mean he hasn’t thought about guys before...but he isn’t gay. Totally isn’t gay, at all, even a little bit. Not even bi. Yeah.
personification...[/b][/size] Humpty Dumpty
status...[/b][/size] Awakened, though Humpty has never directly appeared to him. He has nightmares about falling off walls and breaking into a thousand pieces, and he has a sort of vague idea in the back of his head that he is fundamentally irreparable.
face claim...[/b][/size] Jensen Ackles[/blockquote]
...appearance*
physical...[/b][/size] One of the most distinctive qualities of Holden’s face is undoubtedly his eyes. They are large, and an unusually vivid green, rimmed with dark eyelashes that give them an almost feminine quality of beauty. His hair, usually kept relatively short and with a subtle widow’s peak, is a sort of light auburn brown color, depending on the way the light hits it. He has a slight cleft in his chin, relatively angular features, a square jaw, and a smattering of faint freckles across his nose. His lips are defined and plump and remarkably pink – overall, he’s just an exceptionally good-looking young man.
Excepting his legs, Holden is also very well-built. Prior to being confined to a chair all hours of the day, he stood at about five foot eleven inches tall, and he has retained his toned and muscular torso even after the accident. His skin has paled out a little from its former healthy tan, and he is a bit thinner than he was previously, but overall – wheels aside – he is still quite appealing, physically.
clothing style...[/b][/size] Nondescript, nowadays. He puts significantly less effort into his appearance than he did in the past. Holden can usually be seen in a t-shirt, jeans, a hoodie or windbreaker, and some sneakers. Sometimes he mixes it up with a tank top or a flannel. Real adventurous in the realm of fashion, this one.
defining traits...[/b][/size] The most distinctive thing about Holden is the wheelchair. Holden is paralyzed from the waist down due to a serious car accident, and thus, he is always seated in the chair, his useless legs propped up on the footrests. They are a bit atrophied, as he has not stood on them in the nine months since the accident; on the contrary, his arms, now his sole functioning limbs, have become very strong from wheeling himself around all day. He also has a faint narrow scar running diagonally from his hairline to the corner of his eyebrow. [/blockquote]
...personal info*
personality...[/b][/size]
People look at Holden and they feel bad for him. That’s just the way that it is. You always feel bad when you see someone in a wheelchair, you always feel bad when you look into eyes that deep and green and expressive and see a century’s-worth of despair and self-loathing. You always feel bad when you see a perfectly healthy young man denied the simple ability to walk. It, of course, makes you feel fortunate, ever-so-lucky that you did not meet the same fate, that you still have functioning legs, whereas this poor dear creature is trapped in metal forever.
Well, cut it the fuck out.
Holden hates nothing so much as he hates to be pitied. Don’t feel sorry for him. Don’t even look at him with sadness in his eyes. If there is one thing he cannot tolerate, it’s the way people look at him, the way their eyebrows subtly twist upwards and the corners of their lips pull down. Yes, he is aware he is in a wheelchair. Yes, he is aware that something horrible happened to him. But he doesn’t need to be reminded by every stranger, every passing civilian who glimpses him and his useless legs curled up haphazardly in his chair, wheeling his way down the street, that he is broken.
In all honesty, ever since the accident, he’s just wanted someone to look at him like he’s a person again, instead of a three-legged dog or a baby rabbit with an ear torn off.
He misses his humanity. He misses feeling proud of himself, he misses getting up in the morning to go running, coming home and pumping iron and making himself and his little sister breakfast. He misses the exhilaration of running. He misses his legs. He misses his sister. He misses the tremendous cost of everything and, goddammit, if he could only have known why, maybe it would make it easier. If there could have been a reason, if they could have died for some purpose instead of just human fucking stupidity. If he could have lost his legs and everything he loved and known why, it could have been easier. But it was all so sudden, so abrupt. It left him reeling, and – pardon the expression – he still hasn’t gotten his feet back under him.
It was different before. He was confident, self-aware, cocky. Maybe he could be a little arrogant, maybe he could be kind of a jackass, but under the mischievous, shit-eating grin was a devoted big brother, a musician, a loving son, a decent cook. He was fairly popular in high school, good at sports. He got drunk at parties and smoked before he was eighteen because he thought it would make him seem grown up. It was different before, when he was nothing more than a normal teenager, a normal college kid, a normal young adult trying to find his place in the world. It was different when he cared, when things and people mattered to him. He could be an asshole and school wasn’t his favorite thing, but he was the one who wiped his baby sister’s tears and served up her bowls of Froot Loops, he was the one who locked himself in his room and wrote songs about feeling lonely in a crowd.
Boy, did he underestimate loneliness.
He likes to put on a brave face. He likes to pretend he’s okay, he likes to pretend that it doesn’t fucking hurt every second of every day, awake or asleep, and he likes to pretend he doesn’t see his sister in the face of every little girl he lays eyes on. He likes to pretend he doesn’t need help, doesn’t need anyone. Holden’s a champion at pretending – he never thought he would be such a good actor (he was always better at rugby than he was at theater), but he’s learned. Because nobody wants to listen to his stupid problems. Nobody really cares. There’s nobody left to care about him, so he gives them no reason to care. He smiles and he jokes and he makes light of his situation even though every crack joke he makes is agonizing, even though every time he tries to smile through it he just wants to die.
He just wants to die. He wants to die more than anything. He knows he’ll never “get better,” he knows his spinal cord will never magically fix itself, and he knows he’ll never get his little sister back – that leaves one option to him. There is nothing he wants more than to have died in the accident beside his little sister and his father, there is nothing he wants more than to not wake up tomorrow morning. He thinks about it all the time, makes plans. Roll his chair in front of a train. Put a bullet in his head. Slit his throat open. Take too many sleeping pills.
But he’s too much of a coward.
He can’t do it himself and he knows it. He isn’t strong enough, isn’t brave enough to do what should have been done nine months ago. He isn’t strong enough to kill himself and he hates himself for it. He hates himself for a lot of things.
Killing his family is very high on the list.
No matter what anyone tells him, Holden will always be convinced that the accident was his fault. The police and his therapist and the doctors can tell him as many times as they want that he did nothing wrong, that it was the truck driver’s fault, that he was the one who didn’t stop when he should have, he was the one who lost control. Holden doesn’t care. He is convinced that if he had done something different, if he had just anticipated, then he could have saved his father, could have saved Joey, could have saved Liv – and no-one can tell him otherwise. It is a deep-rooted and senseless guilt, and it consumes him. The only thing Holden hates more than pity is himself.
But he has to be strong. His father taught him to be strong. He has to be strong for Joey, strong for his parents, strong for Liv. He has to carry on, because there’s nothing else he can do.
He has to carry on until something puts him, at last, out of his misery.
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (n.): a psychological reaction occurring after experiencing a highly stressing event (as wartime combat, physical violence, or a natural disaster) that is usually characterized by depression, anxiety, flashbacks, recurrent nightmares, and avoidance of reminders of the event —abbreviation PTSD —called also post-traumatic stress syndrome
life until now...[/b][/size]
Holdy we have to stop for ice cream
Things were so normal for such a long time. White two-story colonial, parents who loved each other. First child of the Donnellys, Matthew and Madison, young and cheerful and fresh. They named him Holden Michael. There was some tradition about that on Madison’s side of the family, that all the firstborn boys had the middle name Michael, something she’d carried in her heart for so many years.
Holdy
He reached all the developmental milestones on time. He was their Little Green Eyes, tottering around the house on baby legs freshly in use, blonde hair darkening to auburn with each passing month. He smiled. His first word was “Dada.” His favorite food was sweet potatoes from a jar.
He was perfectly average, as parents so desperately hope their baby will be.
we
Holden wasn’t a genius. He wasn’t writing symphonies at age five. Reading took a little time, math took a little more. He was far from stupid; he just wasn’t a very good speller.
His intelligence wasn’t in English. He wasn’t particularly bad at it – he was just average. Art he liked, though. He had a bit of an eye for it. And even if numbers got a bit mixed up in his head, he was good with his hands, he had a good memory. He liked building things. His father joked that maybe he would be an architect like his grandfather as he watched his three-year-old son construct castles out of colored wooden blocks. That never quite went through.
But he was a strong child, good at sports. He made friends, got in a reasonable amount of trouble for a little boy with a big attitude. And the Donnellys were pleased.
They didn’t need a genius.
have
The additions to the Donnelly clan didn’t start until Holden was nearly eleven. His parents had been married young. His mother had given birth to him when she was just past twenty-four, when they were just settling into their clean little colonial after they’d settled into adult life. It was fortunate that Matthew’s parents were so supportive of them. It was fortunate they were so ready to settle.
Regardless, about a month before Holden’s eleventh birthday, Joseph Gray became the second son of the Donnelly family.
Holden was a good brother. He wasn’t even jealous. He’d always wanted a little sibling, really, and a little brother? Could things get better? He could teach him about Hot Wheels and show him how to play football. He could stick up for him when kids at schools bullied him. The moment he saw Joey for the first time, he knew that it was up to him to protect him.
to
As Joey grew, he idolized his big brother as he had no-one else before. Holden was quite clearly his everything for the first several years of his life, and his older brother couldn’t have been more pleased about it. He had to set a good example, he knew, so he tried. Of course, he had his slip-ups – he gave into peer pressure sometimes, smoked a little, went to parties and had too much cheap beer out of red plastic cups. But he was expected to do that sort of thing. He was likeable, good-looking, he brought home decent grades, and he was on the football team. That made him important.
Still, he didn’t let Joey see any of his worse qualities. He had very strict rules with his friends – no drugs or alcohol near my brother. And when Holden Donnelly told you to do something, you did it. He had that kind of influence.
stop
The third addition to the Donnelly clan came along when Holden was fourteen. His mother was thirty-eight, teetering on the edge of her childbearing years. It was a happy accident they decided not to fix, and the family was happier for their decision.
Olivia June Donnelly was the most beautiful baby girl Holden had ever seen.
The moment he laid eyes on her, he loved her. Staring at her with her big green eyes so like his as she squirmed in his mother’s arms, he knew he loved nothing in the world so much as he loved his baby sister. With Joey, he had just assumed he would be a great big brother. With Olivia, he swore. He made an oath with himself that he would never let her come to harm, that no matter what happened she would be his baby sister and he would protect her forever.
for
Their mother was diagnosed with breast cancer when Liv was three. They were out of Elkins by then, settled in a town closer to a college with a football team and a good music program. Joey was six by then, Holden seventeen. Neither of the younger Donnellys had much of an idea what was going on with their mother – just that she was sick, and losing her hair, and that she wasn’t at home very much. It wasn’t the same for Holden and his father. They were older, conscious. They knew what it meant when they saw Madison get thinner and paler, they knew what it meant when the doctors looked at them with those sad eyes.
Holden was the one who had to break the news to Joey and Liv. His father was too much of a wreck.
Madison had always been such a central force in their home. She’d taken Joey to his soccer practices, she’d mothered Liv like a champ, she’d gone to all of Holden’s football games and rugby matches, given her husband backrubs after rough days at the office. She had been an amazing mother, and her sudden loss was like pulling the rug out from under the Donnellys’ feet.
ice
His father went out of commission for months. It became Holden’s responsibility to get Joey to soccer practice, take Liv to her toddler ballet lessons. It became Holden’s responsibility to put on a brave face and try his best to become the pillar of solidarity and self-control his mother had been. He wanted to cry, but he didn’t. He wanted to scream, but he didn’t. He wanted to punch things and kick things and swear, but he didn’t. Instead, he held it in.
But it was hard. He was a senior in high school – his responsibilities exceeded his home life. He had homework to do, football practice to attend. It was too much for him. He floundered under all the things he needed to juggle, eventually got kicked off the football team for missing too many practices. His then-girlfriend left him because he simply couldn’t make enough time for her. He dropped out of the party scene but continuously drank to keep the despair at bay. But he didn’t let any of that look like it affected him.
It was rougher when he went to college. There was more work, there were more responsibilities, seminars, lectures, group projects. He didn’t have time for sports anymore. Sure, he could commute from home to college, but he had to sacrifice so much of the experience so he could make sure that Joey and Liv got where they were going and his father was still paying the bills. He cooked dinner most nights, packed the kids’ lunches. He didn’t go to college parties. He didn’t stay in a dorm. He didn’t make a whole lot of friends. He didn’t have time.
cream
The grades he raked in weren’t great, but they were passable. He got his bachelor’s degree in Political Science, something that seemed practical even though he didn’t care very much about politics. He had forsaken his dream of being a musician long ago. He needed to do something practical, and he was pretty good with (and at) people. He needed money for his family.
Things started to steady out after college. Holden went from job to job, sometimes working two at a time. He went out sometimes, continued to drink too much, but most of the free time he had he spent with his family. His father, finally, four years after the death of his wife, was finally starting to come back around, pull his weight in the Donnelly household, taking some of the weight off of Holden’s shoulders. Things started to get better, easier.
Holden’s 26th birthday came around, and the family all bundled into the Donnelly van, bought three weeks ago through the combined efforts of Holden and his father. It was a family tradition that birthdays in the Donnelly household were celebrated at a local steakhouse in town, a steakhouse they had reserved exclusively for the purpose of birthdays. It was the night of November 30th, 2011. His father suggested he drive, but considering his hip had been bothering him, Holden said no. It was okay that it was his birthday. He would drive anyway.
Holden was a good driver – very safe, after years of driving his younger siblings to various events and rehearsals. Maybe sometimes he drove a little too fast, but so did most young men his age. He was driving down the interstate that night at an appropriate speed, radio on, singing and laughing and chatting with his family as they passed through an intersection. They had the green light. A truck was approaching in the other direction.
“Holdy, we have to stop for ice cream!” Liv piped up from the backseat.
Before Holden could respond, the truck ran through the red light and slammed headfirst into the passenger side of the van.
the present...[/b][/size]
Holden woke up in the hospital nine days later to the news that his brother, father, and sister were all dead. The driver of the truck who had run the light was also dead – not even someone against whom Holden could press charges. He was the only survivor of the accident, and he himself had just barely scraped his way out of the situation alive.
Why can’t I feel my legs, he’d asked.
The doctors had looked at each other and frowned.
Why can’t I feel my legs, he said again, louder this time, and then they’d both gotten even quieter than they had been when they’d told him that everything left for him to love in the world was gone.
They told him that his spinal cord had been severely damaged.
They told him they didn’t know the extent of the injury.
But they told him he would probably never walk again.
He left the hospital three weeks later in a wheelchair. It took them forty-five minutes to get him into the van that would take him back to his empty home.
An old family friend came to stay with him, Lucinda Brent, a woman about his mother’s age with a good job and a kind face. She moved in with him. He spent the next month catatonic before they finally wrangled him into therapy.
It’s been nine months since that day.
He still hasn’t forgiven himself.
He doesn’t think he ever will.
other notes...[/b][/size] He refers to his wheelchair as his “wheels” and likes to joke about how tricked out they are.
Also, a swift review of his family members, as they are important:
Matthew Grant Donnelly, father, died in the accident age 51
Madison Patricia Donnelly [nee. Browning], mother, died of breast cancer age 41
Joseph Gray Donnelly, younger brother, died in the accident age 15
Olivia June Donnelly, younger sister, died in the accident age 12[/blockquote]
...literature*
title... Humpty Dumpty, a nursery rhyme
backstory...
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty together again.
Almost everyone has heard this brief rhyme in their childhood – it is one of the famous “Mother Goose” rhymes, made up God-knows-how-long-ago to entertain children. Humpty Dumpty is usually depicted as a large egg with a face and arms and legs who takes a tumble from a high wall and shatters. Of course, being an egg, it is impossible to repair him, and thus, it is to be assumed that he dies of his fall.
...the roleplayer*
tell us about you...[/b][/size] I am Zelda and I need this character. [/blockquote]
...writing*
freestyle...[/b][/size]
January 5th, 2012
There is no way I can title this thing without sounding like a pussy.
Dr. Angelo told me to write in this stupid fucking notebook because he said it might help me work through some of my feelings. Like writing something down is going to somehow make it better.
I think he’s full of shit.
And I don’t care if he reads this and sees it. I don’t care what anybody fucking thinks about me. Fuck ‘em. I do what I want. Always have. That isn’t going to change because my legs’ve stopped working.
I don’t really know what to write about here. Dr. Angelo says I should write about the accident. Like hell am I writing about the accident. He also says I should write about my nightmares. Like hell am I writing about my nightmares.
You know what? Forget this. I don’t even feel like trying anymore.
--Holden
January 14th, 2012
Sometimes I dream that I’m sitting on a wall, and I’m really high up. It’s this big stone wall, I don’t know how high. It looks like the ground is fucking lightyears away or something, but it doesn’t even bother me in the dream. I just keep looking down and I am totally assured that I’m not going to fall.
And then, of course, I fall.
It’s not like most falling dreams, you know? It doesn’t end before I hit the ground. I don’t wake up with a jolt the moment I die in my subconscious. I hit the ground.
I hit the ground and I can feel myself break into a thousand little pieces, and somehow every tiny piece is aware that it’s a piece of my shattered body, and every tiny piece is screaming in this sort of dull pain I can sort of feel but really can’t and then all these people gather around me and there are horses and fucking guys in armor and some shit and they try to put the pieces back together and they try everything, glue and tape and staples and nails, but nothing works, and everything just hurts.
It’s not until they all walk away that I wake up.
--Holden
February 2nd, 2012
Had the dream again.
--Holden
February 17th, 2012
Dear Dr. Angelo,
Please stop fucking asking me how I’m doing. You know how the fuck I’m doing. You know how much I fucking hate everything about my life. You know I hate every second I’m stuck in this chair. You know I hate myself every minute of every day because I didn’t die in that accident with Liv when I know I deserved to. You know how the fuck I feel, so stop asking me. I’m not okay. I’m never going to be okay. I’m broken and that’s all there is to it.
I don’t even know why I bother seeing you, Dr. Angelo. You haven’t helped anything. And you cost a lot of fucking money I don’t have.
--Holden
March 3rd, 2012
it’s my fault everything is my fault it’s my fault liv is dead it’s my fault dad is dead it’s my fault joey is dead everything is my fault i wish i died with them i wish i’d died i don’t deserve to still be alive i should be dead i wish i were dead if i were braver i’d just off myself but i’m too fucking scared and i go to bed every night not wanting to wake up and i don’t know what to do anymore i don’t deserve to live i don’t deserve to live everything is my fault
March 4th, 2012
Please disregard that last entry.
--Holden
March 25th, 2012
Dear Liv,
I wish you were here. I miss you every day. I miss the way your hair smelled when you hugged me and I miss your stupid nicknames and I miss the way you always drank that ugly purplish-gray milk left behind after you were done with your Froot Loops. I swear, I would take your place in a heartbeat. I would do anything, Liv. I would tear apart the whole damn world to have you back, even if it meant I’d die.
I still remember the last thing you said to me. You were in the backseat and I had my eyes on the road, both hands on the wheel, and you said, “Holdy, we have to stop for ice cream.”
And then that semi smashed into your side of the car at eighty miles an hour and we went rolling off the road.
--Holden
April 11th, 2012
Dear Liv,
You would be thirteen today. Happy birthday, little sister.
God, I miss you. I love you so much. Present tense. I loved Joey too, and Dad, but...you were always there for me. You were so fucking smart for a kid, Liv. It was like you’d lived longer than I had and you weren’t even in high school yet.
You were my favorite person in the world. I loved—love—you more than anything. And now you’re dead.
And it’s my fault.
And I will never forgive myself for that.
--Holden
April 27th, 2012
Dear Liv,
Don’t worry, Mrs. Brent is treating me just fine. I think she’s getting tired of me, though. Which is understandable. There’s not much I can do. What jobs can I get? What money can I earn? What can I do around the house? I can’t dust or clean the windows or vacuum the floors.
You know, I still remember what it feels like to run. I loved running, Liv. I loved sports. I loved using my body like that, to have fun.
I took all of it for granted, and look where it got me.
--Holden
May 12th, 2012
Dear Liv,
Sorry I forgot about writing to you. I was doing a lot of job hunting. Nothing turned up. Mrs. Brent’s been in a bad mood because her dog’s sick, so I’ve been trying to make myself scarce somewhere out of the house. I haven’t forgotten about you, I promise.
I didn’t think this journal crap was going to help, but it feels...good, imagining that I’m writing to you, that somewhere you’re reading this. Even if there is no God, even if I know there can’t be a God who would be so cruel as to take my perfect little sister away, I hope there’s an afterlife. I hope you’re in a better place, Liv. I hope you’re with Joey and Dad somewhere beautiful. I hope you guys found Mom.
Tell her I send my love.
--Holden
May 25th, 2012
Dear Liv,
I know you thought that I was strong, but I’m really not. I’m not strong enough, not anymore. I lost something after the accident, something besides my legs. I don’t want to sound cliché or anything, but...I think it was my faith. Not just in God, but in everything. People. Safety. Society.
Myself.
I’m so sorry, Liv. I’m so sorry I let you down.
--Holden
June 3rd, 2012
Dear Liv,
I hate myself so much and I can’t tell anyone. I hate the way people look at me and I can’t tell anyone. I hate that I don’t even know if my dick still works and I can’t tell anyone.
Sorry, I shouldn’t be talking about that shit to you. Gross, right?
I try so hard to keep my dignity, Liv. I try to do things for myself, but it’s so hard. You should see my arms, though. I am ripped now. Seriously, I must be able to bench-press, like, half my bodyweight by now. I guess that’s what happens when you have to use your arms for everything.
Dr. Angelo wants to give me meds for the brain disease he thinks I have. “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.” He says they’ll make the nightmares go away, and the hallucinations.
Thing is, I don’t want them to go away.
I deserve them.
--Holden
June 16th, 2012
Dear Liv,
I can’t do this anymore. I have to get rid of this journal. I can’t sit around with this delusion that somehow I’m still talking to you, because it isn’t true. You’re dead. You’re dead because of me, because I was driving that car.
I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.
I love you, baby sister.
See you later.
--Holden
[/blockquote]
