character :: Julianne Phillips
Julianne wasn’t always a Satanist. After all, her plain upbringing was just as mild-mannered as you’d expect it to be for a spoiled middle-class girl raised in a comfortable home by married parents who worked fulfilling jobs. Her parents didn’t even get divorced until after she was an adult living in her college apartment; while she tried to make a big deal out of it to anyone who would listen, it were for lack of any real struggle in her life. Her friends were sympathetic, but Julianne soon realized; it’s because they too were just as bored in their simple and comfortable lives.
on the wild side.
It started with some basic party drugs with all of the other basic bitches who claimed to be ‘on another level’. She felt great but the high only lasted until the money ran out, and it just wasn’t her thing. There was an element of getting away with something, but it wasn’t worth sitting in a room full of equally bored rich kids becoming ‘enlightened’ over a free Netflix documentary. She played the role of ‘insufferable vegan’ for about a year just to have something to complain about, followed by the ‘therapists’ worst nightmare’ after she found out you could pay to have someone tell you that your problems are valid. She found some form of vindication here and realized maybe her issue wasn’t what she was doing…maybe it was something she wasn’t. She re-focused on school and found herself bored but more or less on the right track. Maybe her phase was over?
And then something actually bad happened to Julianne. He was a well-liked boy, too. All of a sudden her picturesque life was on trial: a grimy little hipster girl with mental problems and a drug habit accuses a senior class president of rape? What happened to all of that talk about how ‘upstanding’ she was simply for a pretty face?
Her parents were very supportive when she sat a semester out at home, first her father’s and then her mother’s, putting the pieces back together. Her friends were busy with their own lives, this protest or outrage or another, and eventually they became facebook filler. When Julianne went back to school the following spring, her boring life had just become too real, the suffering too much; it was time to look to a place she’d been told over and over again to go. There’s a Baptist church a block away from the school, and the other girls that looked like her swore that it would be the one place to give her meaningless life some direction.
It didn’t work. Julianne tried every Christian church she could find: Methodist, Catholic, Presbyterian…she began branching out. She found a Buddhist Temple, a Mosque, and a very kind man who directed her to the nearest Gurdwara. She prayed and listened to sermons, spent long nights on her laptop surrounded by fast food bags reading articles. It made her feel frantic in a way, sitting in her class trying to take notes while in her chest a gnawing problem got at her. Whether it were guilt, fear, anger, or longing didn’t matter; the panic was all she could hear.
to those who deserve it
instead of love wasted on
ingrates.
Finally, on her way to pick up her mail, she passed a new bumper sticker that someone had vandalized the “US Post” sign with in her apartment complex. Someone had taken the time to attempt at peeling it off, so it must have been good; it looked like an infinity symbol sprouting a double-cross, followed by a website: churchofsatan.com. Julianne laughed to herself, shifting through the two pieces of mail she had gotten (junk) and walking by the sign one more time. Another woman had been distracted by the bumper sticker herself, and she worked with her manicured fingernails furiously to remove it.
The coiling and re-coiling of the serpent in her chest got the best of her as Julianne flopped on her futon, absentmindedly petting her cat. She looked up the website on her phone like she had for countless other religions, and began reading.
The next morning, Julianne had a neatly compiled list of school groups in hand that would change her life. All throughout university, until she graduated with a major in non-profit and a minor in business, Julianne found solace in the one religion that told her it was okay to feel bitter and cheated if that’s what she wanted to do. She owned her body and she could feel however the hell she wanted to feel; she didn’t owe it to the world to be happy. Eventually, after landing a very successful job and mortgaging herself a decent home in the suburbs, Julianne found that one last thing was missing: she was 26 now and she wanted a baby. But, being who she is at the time and not wanting a romantic or sexual relationship…it would be a challenge. Or it would have been, had the church not introduced her to a friendly man who was happy to oblige
Andrew and later, his boyfriend Sean, both become close friends to Julianne as she raises her child alone and as happy as a lark. It couldn’t be better, for she had it all; and then some. Julianne wasn’t expecting the emotions she felt when Kelsey began making an appearance in her dear friend’s lives – the sister of Andrew’s boyfriend – but then again, Julianne really didn’t like putting a label on her sexuality just for the reason that it would definitely change in the future. Kelsey was a sad, sad girl with a child and a marriage to a stranger. Julianne could see it, Andrew could see it, and to an extent, so could Sean. So why couldn’t she? Julianne will make it her business for the rest of her days to ensure that little Kelsey no longer questioned her own gut: after all, what happiness could come of that?
