[attr="class","TRAINER3"]

HAPPINESS…

Had an honest-to-goodness way of sneaking up on Jensen in the best and worst of ways. It was in the rain that dripped against the window as he was born, his mother’s sweet lily perfume, the softness of her skin. It was in those first few years where they didn’t have a lot of money, and his parents worked a lot, but it was okay. Happiness found him in the form of second hand video game systems and pokemon cards that were carefully pressed into binders, lovingly sorted numerically. Warm baths and soft clean clothes, and the rumbling laughter of his father in those few years where they could still claim to be a family.[break][break]

happiness….

Had a way of draining entirely from his body. Straight from his head down through his veins, out his fingertips like wet paint and draining through his toes like water through well drained soil. It wasn’t like he’d imagined. As a child, as a young innocent child, he thought life was pretty okay. He didn’t have many friends but he made up for it by coming home directly after school and spending time watching his mother crochet on the worn out loveseat in their living room. His father, on the other hand, seemed to find his happiness in different ways. In green leafy substances and white powders, and weird crystallized rocks that were packed carefully into small baggies and distributed from the comfort of their home. [break][break]

His mother didn’t like it. She didn’t have much of a choice in the matter, but one raised voice too many found Jensen in the bathroom on the phone with emergency lines and listening to his mother choke on her blood. It took them an hour to reach his house, living in a bad part of town. His father left him in the bathroom to rot and escaped the house, only to be caught and shot on sight two days later after waving a gun around and holding a poor bystander hostage. Newspapers called him the poor orphaned child of a tragedy, but no one stepped forward to lend a helping hand. He was tossed into a broken system and left to scatter in the wind like so many children before and after him. [break][break]

Who was once a rather bright and cheerful child became introverted and quiet, clinging to binders filled with faded pokemon cards and a worn game system holding on by a thread. He found his friends in virtual worlds where he could be the hero of his own destiny, and found out just how lonely being a foster child could be. He learned a few good solid lessons. Don’t argue with the wanted children. Keep out of sight, and out of mind. Don’t ever expect kindness, or take it for granted. After the first few houses, he stopped unpacking. He kept his belongings in a suitcase shoved under his borrowed bed, and fell asleep at night with his gameboy under his pillow and a stuffed cheetah under his arm. Pokemon and Percival seemed to be his only friends for now, and with him constantly changing schools he figured it would be that way for a long time. [break][break]

While life never really seemed to get better for him, he landed himself in a semi-permanent home in a rather bustling town. Saffron City wasn’t exactly the best of places, but placed in a rather fetching Canadian-French neighborhood with an older generation surrounding him, he felt he couldn’t really complain. There were plenty of worse places to end up. The Bellerose family were kind enough and the schools nice enough where for once, Jensen felt he could relax. Being so quiet during most of his young years of life, he had issues speaking at his age. Fuddled only further by the common use of French around his family home and neighborhood he caught on to the language rather quickly, which became his predominant language rather fast. This led to miscommunication more than not. He flubbed words, forgot English on occasion, and simply didn’t understand a lot of metaphors in his early years. [break][break]

happiness…

Had a way of confusing him sometimes. With such a gory past he was often labeled as a “problem child” mostly whispered about behind closed doors, and these times were no different. The Bellerose family had been kind, but what had he done to deserve this? Papers were signed, hands shaken, and suddenly Jensen found himself a new family. Adopted for reasons beyond his comprehension he was given his own room, a sense of belonging, and therapy to help him solve all his well hidden problems. While he was careful, he eventually found all his defenses breaking down as he realized he wouldn’t be sent away again. [break][break]

He settled into a pretty good routine from there. Bullied in school for being a scrawny spanish kid who spoke almost exclusively French to annoy his peers, he did decently enough to not worry. What he did manage to find, was a boy. A boy one year younger than him with eyes that shone like stars and whose smile lit up his heart, even if he was too young to really realize it. He promised to protect that smile even if he wasn’t the strongest or the best, even if he was just a scrawny Spanish kid with no real sense of purpose. They grew up and their love bloomed into something hard and fast, a flame with no sense to die down. They dealt with their issues in school, but otherwise they were happy. [break][break]

Luckily the span of a few years left him invisible to most of the population of the school and he managed to slide by, while focusing on other more extensively rising problems. [break][break]

Namely his severe anxiety disorder, and his fear of acknowledging it. With a crippling sense of severe lack of self-worth and a lack of belief in his own abilities he turned to something very easy to get at the time, and something he very quickly turned into a coping mechanism so he wouldn’t have to worry his adopted parents. Weed. Smoking weed seemed to calm him down to comfortable levels and left him without the constant buzz in his brain and veins demanding him to move and do something. While it drained his resources and eventually stretched him thin regarding money and resources, he started working at the local corner store to support his habit, and his rising interest in gaming. He spent most of his free time on his consoles chasing after achievements, and even started getting interesting in recording guides on the internet for people to follow. [break][break]

For a while things seemed to follow in this trend. He left little thought to supernatural causes (except for the ghost of that little girl that haunted their house, she was absolutely real.) and mostly kept to himself, and once again found himself caught in the early setting days where the tired set in his bones and he stared at walls for seeming hours. He waited until he was 19, until he and Kasper could finally get out of that dreary town before he could really feel alive. But suddenly, things took a turn for the worst. Bullets and blood seeped through his chest and he was numb, so numb and cold and dying. He was dying.[break][break]

happiness…

Had left him. Left him entirely with no memory of who or where he was. He had to be reintroduced to his parents, who spared the details of his gory upbringing. They took him away, far away to Solaceon and told no one since there was really no one to tell. Happiness once again bled through his veins down through his toes, like the blood that had seeped through his chest and ripped through him. He had a heart condition now, something that couldn’t be fixed. He couldn’t exert himself, not that he wanted to, and he settled into a pretty boring life where he couldn’t smoke weed anymore, couldn’t even remember that he’d liked to do so. [break][break]

He had to piece together a new life, which wasn’t easy, but eventually he couldn’t stand the pitying looks his mother gave him all the time, and the cautious way his father tip toed around conversation. He decided he needed out, and he did so in the dead of night with only a letter to tell of his safety. He got quite the earful the next day due to his irresponsibility, but he managed to make it work.