#yarnist

Raised by a socially estranged single mother, Yarnist never really stood a chance of fitting in. After all, you can’t have friends over when your windows are covered with newspaper and paper bags.

Yarnist never even got the chance to meet other kids her age, or anybody for that matter. She was homeschooled and never left the side of her deeply unwell mother.

Having no clue of how abnormal this was, Yarnist never took issue with this it was all she’d ever known. To make it worse, the attitude the public took with her and her mother only reinforced the paranoid delusions of her mother.

In their house, it was an undeniably reality that the world was against them. In fact, they wanted the two dead.

The social torment they faced was all coordinated and planned, hoping to corner and isolate them. Once vulnerable, these distant oppressors would finally violently strike.

Everything was proof of this theory.

Their neighbors would watch as Yarnist and her mother drove by. People would murmur to each other while they passed. Sometimes the ‘police’ would even try to get into their home. The world was out to get them, surely.

TV wasn’t a thing in Yarnist’s home. According to her mother television was a psychological operation to turn her daughter into a homosexual.

Instead, Yarnist spent her time picking up artistic hobbies to pass time. She enjoyed knitting the most, as it was something her mother would often do alongside her. It was a rare moment of comfort they’d share.

With an entire childhood of isolation, Yarnist would grow incredibly proficient at knitting, especially for somebody at her age. She’d create herself strange garments based on the occasional glimpses of what she saw other girls wearing around town.

Yarnist’s only real tastes of the outside world came in the form of running anxiety ridden errands with her mother. She could only assume how these depraved strangers must live.

She could only fill in the gaps with the information fed to her by her mother, which was a web of paranoid delusion.

While fear was the driving feeling behind Yarnist’s relationship with the public, there was a twinge of envy lurking behind. Seeing all the beautiful young women dressed in the cute and youthful clothing her mother denied her only made her crave it more in private.

This complete quarantine from society would finally end in what would have been Yarnist’s Sophomore year of high school.

After years of reports from their obviously concerned neighbors, the authorities would finally step in. CPS quickly removed Yarnist from the home after discovering their state of living, and a judge would find her mother unfit to care for her.

Suddenly Yarnist went from being completely isolated from society to being thrust into the adoption system. A change she clearly did not take well.

For the first 6 months, Yarnist truly believed herself to be kidnapped by some sort of cabal. Everybody in the facility she was kept in was part of some grander plot, she just didn’t know what for yet.

She resisted any care the service workers tried to provide, notably eating as little of their provided food as possible. A handful of trauma therapists tried to straighten out her behavior to no avail, she simply was too certain of her own delusions.

This hardened shell was only cracked by a very kind girl a few years younger than Yarnist. Even after months of rejection and retaliation, the girl didn’t give up on Yarnist like the social workers did.

The two grew very close after some time, the girl functioning as Yarnist’s only connection to the rest of the people around her. The girl spent hours a day answering Yarnist’s questions about the world while she anxiously knitted.

She eventually would warm up to the social workers just enough so that they could get her to eat and bathe, which were huge steps for her.

Little did she know she was about to be thrown in the deep end.

A crisp envelope was handed to her by a caretaker at her facility, inside it would contain her radical new future.

Hopes Peak University, an institution she’d never heard of, had invited her to audition for a spot in next year’s class. Her immediate instinct was to reject this letter, but her only friend implored that she take them up on this opportunity.

With the pressure of her friend and the good wishes of the people watching over her, Yarnist would set off on her next chapter in life alone and afraid.