February 3rd, 1995 (24)
Gender / pronouns: Cis Female / She & Her
Hometown: San Francisco, CA
Occupation: Cashier at Stuff & Things Thrift Shop
Face-claim: Lana Condor
tw: death, cancer, homophobia, depression
June Louise Armstrong was adopted as an infant by Lianne and Henry Armstrong, both history professors at Stanford University. She and her sisters, Hazel and Rose, were raised in San Francisco, specifically Glen Park, and spent every weekend alongside their many cousins with their grandmother, an incredible matriarch who lived in a grandiose estate in Nob Hill. Her childhood was split between a strict, emotionally distant household her parents and a warm, vibrant, educational household with her grandmother at the estate. Madeleine, June’s grandmother, was the supportive, compassionate parental figure she desperately needed and didn’t have during the school week. June counted down the days, and sometimes even hours, until she could go back to her grandmother’s every single week. Every weekend promised a new book, musical instrument, or what Madeleine called “adventures in the city” where they would go to zoos, art museums, operas, and plays.
No material object or expensive experience, no matter how educational, could compare to the love and warmth her grandmother showed her, and that’s what June counted down for every week. Madeleine was the one who bought June a guitar and keyboard when her parents said it wasn’t ladylike and called them out for their outdated views when they told her she was damning herself eternally when she was forced to come out as bisexual at thirteen. The Armstrongs had always been a very religious family, but June left the church when she was thirteen and a member of the congregation found out from someone June went to school with that she was bisexual. It was nothing but pointed bible verse suggestions and judgmental side eye after the news predictably spread like wildfire, and June never went back. This also marks when June and her parents really began to butt heads. They cite her lack of discipleship as the reason for her sexuality, tattoos, career, taste in music, and what they call her “failure as an adult.”
June’s grandmother was the light at the end of the tunnel when no one understood her at school or at home. When June was seventeen years old, around the time the fight with her mental demons came to a head, her grandmother was diagnosed with late stage cancer and less than three months later, lost her battle. The news hit June like a head on freight train and her life was changed drastically during what had already been a difficult time. If some events divide life into Before and After, this was the most poignant division for June. Her family insisted that their faith should’ve cushioned the blow of her passing, and that was the nail in the coffin of her religious belief.
Those beliefs were replaced with a love of art and music, of which the latter bordered on worship at times. Her love of music started when she was small, too small to speak in sentences, and erupted as she grew older and started to connect with melodies and rhythms everywhere she went, no matter what. Playing music was one of the only other hobbies that held her interest long enough to make it past a few months, and what started with a pink toy guitar turned into a decades long, passionate love affair with music that included three failed bands before high school ended and a whole arsenal of songs that nobody has ever heard. As hard as her parents tried, they couldn’t keep from her music.
After barely graduating from high school after the tragedy, the only course she saw to take was to go to college far, far away in Seattle and dance, play, and experiment her days away while she was supposed to be learning. This was when she formed the only band that has ever lasted more than eighteen months and fooled around with every drummer she could get her hands on, besides her own. Every moment she was awake, she was spending with her band or her friends, and her schoolwork quickly fell by the wayside. After her second semester ended and she realized she wasn’t going to be allowed back because of her failing grades, she did the only thing that she could: get a job in town and move in with three girls from her Psych 101 class who had all dated each other and, in the last year, all tried to date June.
The five years since failing out of college have been the most freeing of June’s life. Where the rest of the world saw the turns she’d made as complete failures, her parents very much included, June saw the situation as a fresh start; a chance to free herself from the expectations she’d been fighting her entire life. She’d always been an artist in the midst of serious professionals, and being an artist surrounded by artists was a dream come true. A dream followed closely by drama, mental issues, and poverty, but also one of wild, creative imaginings and the tightest, most meaningful friendships she’d ever had the fortune of stumbling upon. Some of those being her roommates, some being her coworkers, and some of them being the rad motherfuckers in the band she’s been in since college. That band is the largest driving force in her life and not only takes up the majority of her time, but the majority of her focus and thoughts.
Nowadays, when she’s not wreaking havoc after work at her favorite diner or the local skateshop, which she could easily call her second homes, or recording a cover that only three people will ever listen to on Soundcloud (or, on a rare occasion, writing an actual song of her own), June is almost definitely at the movies. She keeps up to date with as many Oscar hopefuls and arthouse newcomers as she can, and spends most late nights on her laptop, watching old classics that make her nostalgic for a time she didn’t exist in. Her trivia trophies are some of her proudest possessions and her banishment from as many trivia nights some of her proudest memories. She doesn’t claim to have it all, but she does claim to know it all, at least when it comes to movies. Maybe someday she’ll learn to grow up (hopefully not), but for now, she’s happy living her best life as a flighty weirdo.
+ goofball, free-thinking, talented
– unreliable, unpredictable, aimless
