✘ ╱ better keep an eye on RYLAN PRATT whenever they are around. Some say the TWENTY FIVE year old made their name by being a DRUG SMUGGLER for THE COMMAND. Feared by their RECKLESS + UNPREDICTABLE tendencies, however, their CHARISMATIC + ENERGETIC side helps maintain the facade. Can be easily found in MANHATTAN working as A MODEL.
[ Depression tw, drugs tw, anxiety tw, eating disorder tw, alcohol tw ]
Money bought you comfort, security, an education, designer clothes as well, but apparently it couldn’t buy you security inside your own mind. If she had to hear the words ‘what do you have to be sad about?” one more time the chances are Rylan Platt would go swinging for whoever’s mouth it had come out of because they were words she’d been hearing all her life. Born on the Upper East Side into a painfully wealthy socialite family had it not been medically impossible she’d have come out of her mother with a golden pacifier in her mouth. She sure as hell had one in it not long after.
Appearances being everything to Olivia and Kennedy Pratt so they naturally sent their daughter to the most prestigious schools, the best after school clubs, and had tutors to make sure she didn’t flunk out and embarrass the family. That was all good and well, but nothing really caught Rylan’s attention until she started playing piano as well as singing when she started high school - it gave her a freedom that she’d craved desperately longer than she’d even been aware herself. Plagued by insecurity her entire life her own mind had been a prison to her but when she closed her eyes to let the music carry her away there was a small rest from that fog.
Her depression had started to develop around the time she hit puberty, fuelled by body image issues that spilled over into other aspects of her life including her own feelings of self worth. Suddenly she would get into such negative self loathing mainframes she would spent days at a time in bed, hiding out from the world, sometimes crying and sometimes just laying there staring at the ceiling. Obviously her parents threw money at the problem, sending her to shrink after shrink who medicated her on and off, but nothing seemed to ever truly work enough to stop the depression from rearing its ugly head every so often. These days she is pretty fast and loose when it comes to taking her medication, as well as going to see her therapist. When she’s feeling good the woman is convinced she doesn’t need one, it’s only when that crippling depression hits her like a school bus that she is in a position where she needs someone to talk to. Only problem is that those are the times, sometimes weeks in succession, where she doesn’t get out of bed. Not particularly helpful when it comes to her career as a model for many high end brands and magazine spreads, the obvious choice of career for a girl plagued by insecurity. The industry was brutal, and more often than not she would end up lower than before in the wake of a shoot.
When she was approached by someone regarding making some extra money on the side helping to shift the drugs she herself was addicted to - Rylan saw it as an opportunity to rebel against her parents. Playing the model on the outside but additionally using her trips abroad for shoots or fashion week to smuggle contraband back into the United States for The Command. Not needing to get a ‘proper job’ thanks to the comfortable nest egg her parents passed on to her every month and the highly paid advertising campaigns she landed every couple of months as the face of big brands, she could afford to spend her time indulging in her passions. Writing her own music mainly, but also partying her face off. Now she could do it while making some extra cash on the side and her naïvety left her not thinking about the repercussions that she could face being part of such a dangerous group.
Rylan was with the same boyfriend for two years when he proposed to her at New Year, leading her to panic at the prospect of being tied to someone she … thought she loved for the rest of her life was terrifying. She’d been convinced they were made for each other for most their relationship but that had changed a few months earlier when she’d met his coworker and seen what love at first sight really was. The two of them ended up breaking up in the wake of the proposal to Rylan on New Year’s eve. Panicked by the level of commitment it involved she said no, literally running from the scene and into the arms of Nate Jones who she’d been with ever since, although they’d been forced to keep their relationship secret until only about six months ago. He didn’t know of her involvement with The Command - Rylan not wanting to pull him down into that when her emotional baggage already caused him enough worry.
Still she was a vibrant young woman who loved to socialise, be out with friends, drink in the culture of New York City, and explore her own creativity through her music and keep up to date with everything fashion. Writing songs for and about friends, family, situations she got herself into, anything that sparked her inspiration. Everything around her. It was only when she was hit with her depression and insecurity that the girl changed into a shell of herself, it could be hard to watch according to people she had talked to about it in the past. The girl was a sweetheart, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have her fair share of people who didn’t like her, often because she felt threatened by them so she would lash out before they got the chance to. Before they could tell her what she thought was the truth - that she wasn’t worthy of many of the things she had - she’d make sure they knew they weren’t either. It wasn’t a healthy way to communicate but it was entirely involuntary. Plagued with the pressures of looking good in front of the camera which overflowed into her eating habits, an addiction to party drugs that had developed into something far more serious, and her need to numb her feelings with alcohol, Rylan was certainly not an easy person to be around sometimes.
