Welcome to the official StephanieNicole MySpace profile. Let's see. Where to start? I know!!! We'll start where any good story starts. "With Once Upon A Time...".(Wait, wait, wait. Hang .. you get started in on this behemoth of a profile, I'd like to warn you that what we have here is collection of random paragraphs from a book that I've been working on for a while now... This is just a collection of musings that sorta runs on into each other because MySpace doesn't believe in the power of the paragraph. So, it ambles and wanders around and drifts and well, it's a rough draft. So, it's rough. Enjoy.)Once upon a time there was a beautiful young girl. A girl who lived in an enchanted world of magic, madness and mystery. A girl who was all at once powerful and weak. Talented and helpless. A girl with special gifts... But we'll get to that part later, right now we need the background on this girl...It all begins on a very hot summer night in Tucson, Arizona. In a hospital. On the day after her Father's birthday, at 5:55PM on August the 23rd. Her mother had been in labor for quite some time, when suddenly the heart rate monitor began to sound it's alarm. The baby's tiny heartbeat had plummeted and the doctor had no choice but to perform an emergency cesarean. They soon found out that she had wrapped her own umbilical cord around her neck. (Perhaps, this was a few seconds after she had read the file on her current life assignment and began to rethink the whole deal... Ha Ha... Just kidding.) And so she almost died. Almost. Instead she was brought into the world, happy and healthy with curly ringlets of thick dark hair and big blue eyes and was already looking at the world in a special way. Weighing roughly 10 pounds, 11 ounces. She would be the largest baby born that summer at Tucson Medical Center. Also, so said the nurses the most endearing.Her family debated many a name and thankfully settled on Stephanie Nicole. A name that means "Crowned" "Victory" in Greek. Not that her family is Greek. Not at all. More like Irish and Russian. A combination that resulted in a child with porcelain skin and crisp hazel eyes...Stephanie had the mixed blessing double fortune to be born to Penny and Don. Parents that would bring her home and promptly set to work creating as highly dysfunctional a home as possible for her to live in. Of course, they meant well. Her parents met in Philadelphia. Penny was a lingerie model, who also worked as hair stylist. Don was doing many things, some legal, some not so much. When they met, they both had a marriage behind them and a child or two each. These prior marriages would give our lovely heroine three gorgeous sisters. Jennifer from the first marriage of Penny. Renee and Michele from the first marriage of Don. Each one a beautiful and intelligent person.But let us return to the time of Stephanie's birth. By this point in time Penny was sadly already on her way to a profound level of alcoholism and Don was on his way to continue cheating on her Mother and generally being as absent as possible while still being considered a member of the family. This left Stephanie in the care of her older sister, Jennifer, who was a little older than 11 at the time. So concerned about the well being of the new baby was Jennifer than she began to sleep walk in order to constantly check on her. No wonder at all given the fact that her Mother, was more concerned with finding the recipe for the perfect Screwdriver.Through out her life Stephanie would end up being raised by herself, her sister, at times her parents, and at times by people who would come into her life and impart bits of wisdom and then leave again as quickly as they came. It taught her that she must ultimately look within to find the strength to survive. At first this might sound sad but it resulted in the complex and awesome being that we write of today so onward we go...She grew up mostly alone, wandering the otherworldly desert that made up the landscape of her home, hiding in her perfectly manicured hidden backyard and the dark haunted rooms of her parent's spooky, yet perfectly furnished house. She was a light hearted girl who had developed a dark sense of humor at an early age in order to cope with everything she saw. It was better to laugh than to scream. Plus, her family was a family of dry, witty folks with fantastic senses of humor...While she was gifted in many ways she had no idea of them, this could of course be considered due to a sometimes harpy of a mother who informed her daily that she was ugly, fat, stupid, worthless and at times was reminded that she should have been or could have been an abortion. Of course, this was when she wasn't being called a bitch, whore or worse. Stephanie once remarked that one could trace the passage of time by the degree of vulgarity that was hurled at her by her mother.Now, this version of her mother wasn't to be confused with the sober version that was head of the PTA. The wife who threw lavish parties and over-the-top Halloween gatherings. The perfectionist who was the best looking, best dressed mother at her wee private school. The duality of her Mother's personality was always a wonderment to her. It was almost the same with her Father. He was a genius madman with a sixth sense for weakness. Her childhood was punctuated by moments of terror. Moments like her Father beating her Mother, her Mother drinking from morning to mourning to evening and listening to her parents sling abuses at each other than no sane person would tolerate. Stephanie sought solace in her world in her bedroom or in the bathroom. Even going so far as to stock the bathroom with food, water, books, pillows and blankets because it was safer to lock herself in the bathroom than in her bedroom, after all once locked in the bedroom leaving to use the bathroom was dangerous.And so she lived. In a spooky house in the foothills with her parents and for a while her sister. Until, her Father demanded that she help force her Mother into rehab. Her sister refused to trick her and had to leave home, was forced out. And as they almost always do things slowly grew worse. More fights. More violence. More disturbing scenes. Her parents always made sure to include her as often as possible in their battles. There was rarely a month that her Mother didn't keep her home from school to keep her company, as she walked through the house bottle in hand, sunglasses on, telling her preteen daughter every horrible detail in vivid terms. Playing nanny to her own mother, coupled with a decent amount of dyslexia and Stephanie quickly fell behind her classmates in class. Even with her tricks to compensate. Even while she managed to outsmart teachers and tutors and inquisitive well wishers who wanted to make her life more difficult than it already was. She fell through the cracks. Not that she had time for such petty things as school. She was growing to became more aware of what was going on and her always opportunistic Mother began to include her in her machinations. She would accompany her on drunken outings to the food store, the liquor store and the convenience store at all hours of the day so her Mother could buy wine and vodka. It was often a choice of staying in the frightening house with it's demons or driving down a twisting road with a madwoman and her demons. This was a time spent honing her abilities to tell when a man in the parking lot was going to bother them, when someone was going to ask her if her mother was okay. She learned to anticipate the actions of everyone around her.Time moved on and her parents went from bad to worse, hitting and screaming and making themselves crazy. Again and again bringing the fight right to Stephanie, one time throwing her desk light, a beautiful lamp that she really treasured against the wall, shattering it so that it looked like her insides felt and she screamed at them until they left, shocked into remembering they were the adults. She fell asleep and forgot about them until the next morning when she woke up and sliced her ankle open on a shard of glass. Bleeding enough that she knew she needed to go to the hospital, she told them and they informed her that this wasn't allowed. Still she carries the brutal scar. She carries many scars. Some than can't be seen and many that can. In a wonderful act of desperation she began to turn her anger inward, hurting herself to make the outside match the inside. But always careful, always remembering never to hurt herself more than need be to lead her into a blissful trance. She never cut herself like the other girls she heard talking. The maniacs didn't they know that could lead to scars that couldn't be fixed...Not that she ever really felt safe in anywhere in her house. There were all kinds of other worldly beings dwelling in her home. Though no one ever believed her when she was little, she saw everything and was constantly afraid. Fearful of strangers, distrustful of adults and often tormented by children. The other children never understood her, it was like she lived in her own world. A world that made perfect sense in her own head. Which was where she really lived, moving swiftly between the kingdom of her mind to the unseen world around her that soaked up the edges of what everyone else called reality.In the more sane moments, Stephanie was with her animals, roaming the desert with a pack of dogs that were more her friends than anyone else. At night she'd read stories she wrote to her cats, cats she'd only have as long as she kept her father from throwing them outside to meet a certain death to the desert creatures. She'd hide from the monsters on the roof or in the closet, sleeping with ear phones in to not hear the voices... Lights on to not see them prowling around her room... She'd come home from school and run outside to stay until it was too dark and scary to remain alone. Teaching her dog wonderful tricks, climbing into trees to read books, performing death defying tricks on her bike and rope swing, content in her little scary world.And so things went on like this, with Penny growing drunker and more self involved and more self distractive and more self absorbed and Don just drifted in and out like an angry ghost. The magic of the house grew darker and things began to break and shatter. Stephanie would find herself pinned to her bed by unseen forces, she'd hear voices where there were no people, she found bones in the yard and she saw horrible things when she closed her eyes.As long as she could remember she was very different from the other children. Outlearning them in school. Having to be put into her own learning group just so the teacher could keep up with her. A voracious reader, with a limitless vocabulary. Hiding in books at school where no one could find her. Not that she really wanted to be found anyway. She thought the other kids were weird and dirty and boring. She'd wake from her sleepy dream world and spot another child, a child as damaged as her, who's pain she could see in their eyes and she'd know she wasn't the only one. But how do you tell them you understand? How can you convey with words what you can only feel? So, she remained mostly alone, drifting around like the spirits she saw in her hallway.But despite all the madness... She was a child who glimmered with life, who demanded attention and made people laugh easily. She caught the eyes of modeling agents, other parents and angry jealous little girls who at the same time wanted to be her friend and annihilate her. And from a very young age wanted nothing more that to be in front of a camera. Of course, her Father never let her peruse any offers. A mixed blessing at best. She was a child who wanted someone to see her, see her as she really was. A person with limitless talent, this was uttered time and again by her teachers and other parents... She pulsed with charm and abilities beyond her years. She was a girl who wanted to be a star.But her sky would stay dim and dark for a long time still and she knew it and she withdrew even further into her world of glass animals and books and the desert and animals and stealing food and hiding in the bathroom. She started stealing food because her Mother loved to tell her how fat and horrible she was each time she tried to eat something, even though it was the exact opposite and as she grew she fell under the spell of thinking she was a nasty disgusting beast and she'd shyly look at people and wish she could be beautiful like them, tall like them, proud like them, happy like them... The funny thing was the more she turned away and the more she thought she was ugly the more people paid attention to her. Mostly male people. She was constantly finding herself in situations beyond her years, her head turned around by a gaze held too long or a friendly smile. She was growing up and her Mother was growing sicker...(You're going to have to forgive me for it just suddenly ending right here, but like I said I'm actually trying to turn this puppy into a book and what you've read so far is just bits and pieces of what I have and there's still tons more, but I need to sit and cut and paste and write and edit... Stay Tuned...)
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