i'm on the run with you, my sweet love

there's nothing wrong contemplating god under the chemtrails over the country club

[pepperchase]

[pepperchase]

hi y’all !! i’m grace & i’m very excited to write with everyone here :-)) i’m a pre-health student @ nyu, super gay, & i love female-fronted pop punk, as evidenced by my fc’s :’)) it’s been a minute since i wrote introductions so apologies in advance if they’re not great, but i’m happy to introduce you all to my kids and get to know all of yours!! read on for pepper :-)

// ABOUT.

❄ · · · PEPPER CHASE has been in Ellingham for LESS THAN ONE year and they look exactly like LYNN GUNN. Having turned TWENTY ONE years old on their last birthday, they are currently a TATTOO ARTIST & MUSICIAN and ARE HAPPY WITH THAT. Known as the LIPSTICK LESBIAN, it’s no secret that they’re DEVOTED & AMICABLE, but also SELF-DEPRECATING & MELANCHOLY. If you’re to meet them, please remember that they are a CIS WOMAN and use SHE/HER.

// BIO.

pepper was born in brooklyn, ny to tess & craig chase. she was their second child, after their son, karl, and they felt their family was finally complete. only a few months after pepper was born, craig passed away. tess found herself too depressed to properly take care of an infant, and surrendered her at a nearby hospital. pepper grew up in foster care, bouncing for years between different homes, circumstances, and families. as a young teenager, she began to feel alone, unwanted, and like she had no control over her own life. a long downward spiral started when she was relocated once again at the age of fifteen. 

surprisingly, she was able to find a friend group she fit into at her new school, and one of the girls, hanna mintz, seemed to find her especially charming. they began dating after a couple of months, and at that point, pepper knew she should’ve been happy, that she should’ve finally found her sense of belonging. but all the time she wasn’t sufficiently distracted by hanna’s kind words or soft lips or gentle hands-- or their friends’ antics-- she was thinking about how unworthy she was of it all, how much she absolutely loathed herself. she fell into disordered eating and other self harming behaviors that year and didn’t emerge for a long time. 

of course, it wasn’t all bad-- when she could get her mind off of self-deprecation, she could think about how much she loved being with hanna, feeling like someone finally wanted her, even if she didn’t understand why. she’d known she was gay since she was nine years old-- maybe even before that-- and she was finally with someone who saw her-- and didn’t want to look away. 

a couple of months after pepper’s sixteenth birthday, that, too, fell apart. hanna was killed instantly in a hit and run car accident. pepper’s decline went from slow and steady to drastic. her depression and eating disorders worsened. she flushed her anti-depressants just as they started to work, as she didn’t feel she deserved to be in less pain-- the only good thing in her life was gone, she blamed herself for that, and she’d never even told hanna she loved her. 

for the next year, she did little other than sleep, smoke, and take care of hanna’s cat, tinka. a few months after her seventeenth birthday, tess, karl, and karl’s husband brett arrived at the group home to offer her the stability she’d wanted years earlier. pepper couldn’t feel much for any of them but anger and resentment-- though, to be honest, brett didn’t often cross her mind at all. for tess, she was pretty sure her feelings branched into pure hatred. still, she went with them. pepper was in no hurry to consider them family, and continued to spend most of her time alone. sleeping. smoking, and taking care of hanna’s cat. tess’s guilt kept her from pushing her too hard, and on the surface, pepper wanted that. she wanted to be left alone to punish herself, to suffer. but deeper, it made the wounds worse: her own mother didn’t ask why she didn’t eat or go out with friends or laugh. karl made more of an effort: occasionally sent her memes or brought her iced coffees or offered, somewhat awkwardly, to have a deep talk. after a while, she stopped pretending to be annoyed, and allowed him a few small smiles and showed him a couple pictures of hanna. 

she met jordan fairfield at the high school in tess’s neighborhood, and quickly decided to stick with her: she was sweet, had a great smile, and made her days a little brighter. their friendship quickly blossomed: jordan would drive her home from school in her orange volkswagen beetle, or to panera, where she’d buy her chocolate croissants and make her smile for a few hours. and eventually, it progressed beyond that. their time spent together became far more intense and personal: jordan became the only person pepper could truly talk to, and pepper became jordan’s first love. 

unfortunately for both of them, pepper was far too unwell to reciprocate what jordan wanted to give her. she was hospitalized in december of 2015 after an esophageal rupture that could’ve killed her. for the next year and a half, she hopped between in-patient facilities, not making much of an effort to get better until she met gina. 

gina reminded her of how it felt to be loved, and for the first time, she was less afraid to let herself feel the same way. 

after an extremely low depressive episode and a suicide plot she didn’t follow through on, she decided she was ready to try letting go of hanna-- at least in part-- and her resentment for her family and her hatred of herself. she checked out of treatment in the fall of 2017, almost two years after checking in. 

she worked as a receptionist at a tattoo and piercing parlor for a while, trying to make some money despite the fact that her actual passion, music, was not lucrative. she realized that she truly enjoyed the atmosphere, and became a certified piercer and tattoo artist, still largely performing in coffee shops and bars. 

she moved to ellingham just a few months ago. she knew that jordan, still a close friend, had been living here for almost a year, and not only did she miss having her nearby, but she was getting a bit concerned after hearing about several of jordan’s lifestyle changes. she had also grown tired of the united states, and to a degree, the pace and pressure of the big city. she decided she was ready for a change, at least for a while. 

she now lives in an apartment with a spare bedroom for jordan to crash in, and works at royal ink. she occasionally plays around town and is always working on new music and trying to teach herself new instruments. 

[callaghansjohnv]

GOD IS A WOMAN