【 Name 】Gwen Nero
【 Age 】21
【 Birthdate 】19/January
【 Perceived Gender】Female
【 Sexuality 】Hetero-flexible
【 Appearance 】With long blonde hair with natural, large ringlets and striking blue eyes, Gwen sees her natural self as quite beautiful. She doesn’t always get the same response from others though. Often, the first thing people look at when they see her is her leg. Gwen has a left prosthetic leg that she often does not hide. Instead of people being interested in her as a person, she gets a lot of attention and questions relating to her leg. Having been using a prosthesis since she was eight, she's gotten used to it, but she sometimes finds herself wishing that wasn't the case. Either way, even if someone got past the leg, they are often put off by the grotesque burn scars all along her left arm, the reason she more usually wears long sleeve shirts.
【 Why are you at Spring Hill? 】Survivor's Guilt, PTSD, and extreme phobias of being trapped, tight spaces, and motor vehicles from a horrific accident when she was eight.
【Residency 】4.5 months
【 Negative Effects 】It started as low blood pressure. Then dizziness and lightheadness. Then, a loss of balance and fainting when standing for too long. Now, limbs have started to fall asleep if raised for too long, and when the dizziness gets too bad, there's vomiting involved. Of course, these symptoms are to be expected when your heart rate drops to a mere 40 bpm as it has for Gwen. Even exercise can't bring her heart rate up past 60 bpm, which results in her passing out when she exerts herself. If this is what it takes to get better though, it must be worth it. If the nurses praise it as a miracle drug, then it must be. For there is nothing Gwen would not give of herself to stop the guilt and fear.
【 Positive Effects 】Gwen has a very convincing voice, but only when she's emotional. That is to say, she can make someone do something regardless of that person's will. "Shut the door." "Don't touch me." Simple commands like those that don't cause the person direct harm are carried out by the other person for up to five minutes. Gwen, however, does not realize people do what she says because of a strange power granted to her through medication. Instead, she believes people are scared of her outbursts and thus do what she tells them to. (Commands using her power will be in a different color for clarity purposes in RP.)
【 Personality 】A bit head strong, Gwen always means well. She is kind and compassionate, always wanting to protect those weaker than herself. However, Gwen has good days and bad days with her mental health, as many do. On her good days, Gwen gets along well with everyone. She has a good sense of humor, and she loves to write and share stories with people, and her singing voice isn't too terrible either, even if she's a bit self conscious of singing in front of others.
On her bad days, though, Gwen can hardly be considered present. Trapped in a concoction of flashbacks, panic attacks, and depressive symptoms, she can actually be dangerous to interact with. If someone tries to grab hold of her to calm her down, it will backfire as Gwen lashes out just to be free. However, she also needs someone looking after her as she will forget to eat. Perhaps the hardest part is her belief that she shouldn't even be alive today. That she should have died all those years ago.
【 Biography 】For the most part, Gwen's life actually hasn't been that bad. Born into an upper class family with an amazing mother, father, and younger sister, Gwen was happy and did very well in school. She had friends that invited her to birthday parties, which she was always excited for, and she liked to sing karaoke with her father. This all changed when she was eight.
Coming home from a week long trip to Northern Arizona, Gwen's father became distracted while driving. In that moment, the car veered into the opposite lane and crashed into a semi. Because of how the car hit and compacted, her father died instantly, and her mother and sister fell unconscious. The truck driver was able to pull out her mother and her sister despite the car slowly becoming engulfed in smoke, but couldn't get the doors open on the driver's side. As the fire entered the inside of the car from Gwen's left side, she passed out.
She woke up in the ICU in a mix of pain and a dream like state, but that didn't last long. She was in and out of consciousness for the next few days. When she finally awoke, she learned about her parents' and sister's death. The father in the accident, the mother from head trauma, and the sister, age five, from smoke inhalation. She learned how her leg, having been trapped between the seats, had to be amputated above the knee in order to get her out fast enough. Her life had been changed forever.
Afterwards, Gwen went through half a year of physical therapy to learn how to walk with a prosthesis. It took everything she had to continue getting up despite every time she fell.
With her immediate family dead, she was sent to live with her Aunt Josey (Josephine). Aunt Josey did not believe in psychological therapy being able to help someone, calling it useless at best and a scam at worst, so Gwen did not receive any help towards overcoming her issues. Instead, as she grew older and went through the hormonal roller coaster of puberty, the issues were left to fester, eating away her insides piece by piece. Her grades slipped, she couldn’t keep any friends, and the few dates she went on were a disaster. She barely passed high school one year later than her peers and got a job working at a fast food restaurant for minimum wage.
A year later, Gwen spiraled downhill as her PTSD spiked. She lost her job. On the brink of also being evicted from her apartment, she finally decided enough was enough. She found Spring Hill through an ad online and told her aunt she would be admitting herself. Aunt Josey did not take kindly to this and told her that she would not be welcomed back. These were the circumstances Gwen entered Spring Hill under.
Spring Hill was kind of like a dream for Gwen. It was an escape from reality, but it didn’t save her from her pain, putting her in a type of limbo. She got along well with most people there, but several of them had seen her breakdowns, too. Right now, she just hopes this struggle is worth it.
【 Trivia 】Her favorite flowers are snapdragons because she has fond memories of her and her sister playing with them.
She has a pillow with a nighttime prayer on it even though she isn’t religious because it used to be her mother’s.
She believes in a superstition. Draw a star (asterisk) on the corner of a windowpane whenever there is frost, and the home will be protected from evil. Her father taught her this, who learned it from his father.
