Cole Green

Age in photo: ~17 yrs

## Basic Information

Current date: 2018

Age: 19

Choice music:

* Take Your Medicine– Cloud Cult

* Dogs– Pink Floyd

* How to Disappear Completely– Radiohead

Playlist: Spotify

## Physical Appearance

Cole is 6'2", with black hair and light brown skin. He is extremely skinny; underweight, and gives off a general impression of sickliness.

Pale birthmarks are present prominently on forehead, chin, neck, palms, soles of feet, elbows/knees, with additional smaller marked areas on limbs/torso.

### Scars

   **[TW for self harm]** Circular burn scars are present at the back of neck and on forearms. Also on his forearms are many long scars from fingernail-inflicted scratches, the results of a bad stim habit he's had since a young boy. There is also an appendicitis surgery scar on the left side of his stomach from when he was nine, and a very faint bite scar on his right calf from a dog.

### Outfit

Cole is very obviously a man of habit with the clothes he wears.

He can usually be found in an old leather bomber jacket and worn jeans. When he is (very rarely) not wearing the jacket, he always has simply an old t-shirt on.

Before the age of late eighteen, Cole wore a very "well-loved" olive green hoodie, which he'd had from about sixteen all the way to when it was finally too stained and torn to keep, and it had to be thrown away.

## Background

### Early Years

**[TW for parental abuse]** Cole was born in a large city in Southern California to Greg and M. Green in 1999, the second child of three. (Older brother, T. Green, younger sister, Molly Green).
Starting at age eight and continuing on and off for the rest of his upbringing, he would also live part-time with his uncle, David Green. There would be many custodial battles between his parents and uncle– though his parents were grossly neglectful and abusive his uncle was not deemed fit to adopt due to a combination of factors including past criminal records, age, single status, and mental illness.

Cole struggled in school due to undiagnosed autism and later depression until his eventual dropout early senior year, shortly after his forced outing as a gay man and his uncle's death.

### Late Teens/Early Adult Years

He left home at seventeen and was homeless for a period of around nine months before moving into David's former house shortly after his eighteenth birthday. He was idle and isolated for many months after, switching back and forth between leaving the house for several weeks at a time to wander the streets or staying indoors for months. The only close person in contact with him during this period was an old friend of David's, Ron Jenson. Eventually, he was hired by Ron to work as a cook in his restaurant, in an effort to provide him with some sort of daily routine and a way to keep his mind occupied.

After several weeks of working at the restaurant, Cole would, with the encouragement of Ron, befriend Liam Williams, who was then-employed at the restaurant as a waiter and busboy. They would grow closer until becoming a couple around four months after their first meeting.

## Personality

Cole is quiet in nature and rarely approaches people first in any social situation. He instinctively avoids strangers, less out of dislike for people themselves but more for avoidance of their inherent unpredictability. In interacting with others he is very passive and much prefers if he can get the other person monologuing so he can listen in silence. He is extremely absorbent and enjoys hearing what other people have to say, even if many times he hardly gives the impression he’s listening at all; rarely ever making eye contact or even looking in a person’s direction while conversing and often busying his hands with an idle task while speaking and listening.

Even though he is indifferent to strangers and acquaintances in a number of ways, he has a tendency to fixate on specific people and greatly enjoys the company of those few on his list of familiar people. In this way he is susceptible to becoming overly dependent on one or two people in his life; having a hard time forming a full support network. He loves making people he is close with happy, though he's often at a loss on how– his main language of affection tends to be physical contact, as that's an option even when he is in one of his quiet periods.

## Relationships

### David Green

David was more of a father to Cole than his biological one ever was. Starting from age eight when David became aware of his existence for the first time (after meeting Cole's father, his brother, for the first time in over thirty years), David took on many responsibilities in helping to raise Cole. Despite never being able to gain legal custody, he would often feed and house him throughout the years, sometimes for weeks at a time during periods where his parents were particularly absent. They were extremely close, sharing many interests including arts– David acting as an art tutor for Cole for many years to hone his skills.

In 2016, David died suddenly of a hit-and-run accident merely a street down from his own house. This, coupled with several other life-changing events occurring in rapid succession in the same period of time, turned Cole's life upside down and greatly traumatized him. David left a will that gave Cole nearly everything in his estate, including his house and a majority of his life savings. Unfortunately since Cole was still underage at the time, the bank account containing the latter was transferred into his parents' names, who consumed most of it under paying for their own insurance expenses, debts, and gambling habits. Cole was also legally barred from moving into David's house until his eighteenth birthday, resulting in him being homeless for nine months between his running away from home and finally being able to have the ownership of the house transferred to him.

## Job

Cole currently works at a small restaurant owned by Ron Jenson. He mostly works as a chef, though at several points has been rotated to spending his shifts at the register due to not being able to stand long enough to do efficient work in the kitchen. He loves working in the kitchen as he likes cooking, even if he often does not have the energy to cook for himself, and his job gives him the opportunity to do it more often. It also requires minimal conversation with people other than giving and receiving orders– allowing him to be his quiet self as well as often wear ear defenders and/or play music as he works. He does not like working at the register as he dislikes small talk as well as counting change, but on days or weeks where it's the only work he's physically capable of, he will take it over not going to work at all, knowing the relatively light stress is much easier faced than the idleness and depression that would result in him staying alone at home.

Ron hired Cole mostly as an effort to have him easily under his watch for more hours of the week after Cole came out of a particularly destructive depressive episode, as well as to give him some sense of daily routine and responsibility, provide him with an income to supplement what was left of David's inheritance, and most of all to simply "get him out of the damn house", in Ron's words. It did succeed in doing all of those things for Cole, and though he was miserable going to work at first he is now internally ever grateful for it.

## Health

### PTSD

Cole has c-ptsd stemming from both parental abuse and peer bullying in school. It greatly impacts his life and interpersonal interactions and its manifestations can range from subtle to obvious even to strangers. It is somewhat difficult to determine overlapping symptoms' definite origins as his naturally quiet demeanor, autism, and even physical health symptoms can all exacerbate or coincide with symptoms of his ptsd. It causes him to have immediate extreme reactions to certain stimuli, namely loud noises or yelling, physical contact in specific places or too sudden/roughly, or heated arguments. It contributes to him swinging between being distrustful of others, particularly strangers, or being extremely trusting and dependent on people to the point of becoming blind to all negative traits of said person. He is very spatially aware of his surroundings and is nearly always in a state of hypervigilance.

### Anxiety

Cole's anxiety largely stems from and is exacerbated by his ptsd as well as interpersonal issues relating to autism. He is usually not very anxious in being around or interacting with strangers, unless their actions or personality trigger a ptsd reaction, often not giving a second thought to strangers' impressions of him, though interacting with people he knows or plans to know is a different matter. He has some irrational thought processes and is susceptible to panic attacks triggered by confrontation or intense stimuli.

### Depression

**[TW suicide]** Cole has suffered from major depression for most of his life, starting to severely affect his life at around age thirteen. It has waxed and waned in severity from then to the present day, at its lowest points resulting in several attempts on his life. It greatly impacted his grades at school and was one of the largest contributors to his eventual senior year dropout. At one of its worst spans, in the months directly following his homeless period, he did not leave the house for weeks at a time and lost a dangerous amount of weight. In current times, he is still susceptible to sudden valleys spanning days at a time, but has not had a long-term depressive episode in several months.

### Autism/Executive Dysfunction

Cole's autism went undiagnosed for all of his childhood. His parents described symptoms like adverseness to intense stimuli and meltdowns as being 'oversensitive', difficulty making friends and speaking as being 'odd', or due to a 'quiet personality', executive dysfunction as 'laziness', and processing issues or delayed response times as being 'slow'. His teachers did not take much notice to most symptoms either, Cole attending underfunded schools throughout his education where staff were more concerned with handing the loud and attention-demanding troublemakers than the quiet boy entertaining himself in the corner of the room. When his uncle David became acquainted with him, he almost immediately connected Cole’s symptoms to his own mannerisms and experiences when he was his age. Upon caring for Cole more regularly, David would largely let Cole ‘go about things his own way‘ and taught him a number of coping mechanisms and skills he’d learned through research or his own life experiences, including learning sign language to the point where the two were fluent in communicating with each other through it, though Cole would not become technically fluent in ASL for some years after David’s death.

Cole’s executive dysfunction stemming from his autism effects him severely today, many of his current issues being a direct or indirect result of being unable to complete complex tasks on his own like filling out legal and financial paperwork. It often stops him from being able to make food or keep up with hygiene, this going hand and hand with, as well as exacerbating, his depression.

### Dysautonomia

Cole suffers from Dysautonomia, his symptoms including not being able to stay upright for long periods of time, dizziness and vertigo, fainting, occasional irregular heartbeat, chronic low blood pressure, particularly when standing up (orthostatic hypotension), nausea, weakness/chronic fatigue, migraines, poor appetite, and issues with temperature regulation. It is genetic but has only become particularly apparent in young adulthood, thanks to a combination of factors including mental and physical stress, largely brought on by his leaving home and subsequent homeless months, and a general lack of self-care. He was officially diagnosed after his second related hospitalization, and was prescribed medication and physical therapy, though he occasionally cannot afford the former and rarely the latter.

### Malnutrition/Weight Loss

Cole has had depression-related issues with eating since his early teens. His habits– along with their side effects– worsened exponentially shortly after David's death, when Cole left home at seventeen and was homeless for a roughly nine-month period. He would rarely eat more than one meal a day– oftentimes skipping that– even after he was resettled in David's old house some time after his eighteenth birthday. This was a combined result of not being able to afford food to eat, and not being able to have the motivation or will to prepare any even when he had access to it. The resulting malnutrition eventually turned dangerous; it exacerbated his genetic predisposition to faintness, and his weight dropped to unsafe numbers. He has not been able to fully regain said weight since his slow recovery.

### Piebaldism

Cole has piebalidsm– not to be confused with vitiligo, as his markings did not spread/appear later in life but are constant since birth. He inherited his birthmarks from his father's side of the family– some distant cousins as well as his uncle David also sharing the gene. The light areas of his skin are very susceptible to sunburn– a secondary reason why he nearly always wears a coat or long sleeved top when outside. In periods of time where he has a solidly established daily routine, he puts sunscreen on his face to protect it as well.

Very early in his life it was a quiet shame of his, exacerbated by teasing from classmates; until he grew close with his uncle, where it became a source of pride. It ended up as a symbol in Cole's mind of setting him and David apart from the rest of his family. He would never choose to be without his birthmarks and hates imagining himself without them.