GONZALEZ, EMORY

[EMORY GONZALEZ]

EMORY
MERCEDES GONZALEZ
»»» TWENTY TWO - ALPANY - GUITAR TECH - SINGLE - NANOU

There are six primal social needs of human beings: certainty and comfort, variety, significance, connection and love, growth, and contribution. When all six of these primal needs are met, a person is able to flourish emotionally and spiritually. These needs are, in fact, as basic and essential as food, water, and sex: the physical needs. However, when these needs are insufficiently met, or left untouched from birth, severe mental, emotional, and spiritual problems can occur. Depression and suicide are common resultants when these factors have suddenly stopped being addressed, but in this case, events have led to the creation of a mild sociopath.

Emory Gonzalez was born to a fifteen year old mother and an illegal Greek immigrant. Her mother's family, Spanish immigrants themselves a few generations back, was fiercely conservative and Catholic. To Sarita, Emory's maternal grandmother, the thought of her young daughter having a child of her own was deplorable. Even though Emory's mother fought for the right to keep her baby, who, even though was unplanned and in all intensive purposes a mistake, she desperately loved, Sarita asserted her power over her daughter and forced her to give Emory up to an orphanage. Within weeks of doing so, Emory's mother became depressed and was sent to a boarding school in London. Soon after, Sarita, her husband, and her one other child moved to be closer to Emory's mother. Meanwhile, Sarita turned Emory's father over to the authorities, and he was deported back to Greece, where he remained.

It was at the orphanage that Emory's social needs were deprived, at least until eighteen and she became an adult. Those who worked at the orphanage were not what one would call neglectful, but they also did not go out of their way to interact with any of the children. Emory's physical needs were met, sure - she was given nourishment - but interaction did not extend beyond the typical, "No." "Hurry up!" "Breakfast is over." "Lights out." interactions. As such, Emory never learned how to interact with other humans, let alone handle her emotions. She threw fits, she hit, she cried, and the only reactions she received were even stares. No one wanted to adopt an average sized child whose face was dirty, whose hands were smudged, and whose knees were constantly scuffed and bloody. She watched child after child get adopted while she waited nearby, hoping that someone would turn and look at her for once. And so she began her transformation into a sociopath, shutting down all emotion. It was only through writing notes to the other kids at the orphanage, for every child had to receive education, that she established a few tentative friendships, not that she fully understood the feelings behind the word 'friend,' even at six years old. When she was eleven, the orphanage managed to acquire a few computers and a set of second hand musical instruments. Emory became obsessed. The ability to read, to watch videos, to look at things she would probably never see! But it were the video games that were her real passion. She stumbled across a website devoted to guitars one day. Carefully mouthing out the longer words and looking up the definitions to words she didn't understand, Emory began to educate herself on guitars. Music she didn't understand, mainly because of the emotional implications of it, but she understand guitars. She enjoyed them, enjoyed the mechanics of tuning, of learning what caused sound, of how to fix guitars. Computers and gaming would always be her first interests, but working with guitars slowly grew into another hobby.

At eighteen, Emory became an adult and was released from the orphanage. Kept from the names of her parents, due to Sarita's wishes and discrete tabs on her granddaughter throughout her time at the orphanage, Emory got a job at a bookstore stocking shelves and rented a small apartment. Only recently did she join Alpany as their guitar tech. She would rather avoid the music scene, avoid the traveling and the inevitable interactions with other humans, but being a guitar tech for a popular band certainly pays better than working at a bookstore. Emotionally stunted, lacking the normal young adult sureness of who she is, missing basic knowledge of how to act around other humans, and obsessive about games, computers, and guitars, Emory is quite unlike any other member of the tour. She is a sociopath by society's creation, and it is society who is responsible for her arrival at a healthy place.

nicole/ghost, seventeen, n/a, est/usa.