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PRESS THIS
FOR MUSIC
Sybil was placed in the Florida foster at the age of eight years old due to her mother's prostitution and crack addiction.
Arranged to massage rich Palm Beach billionaires by her high school's lunch lady, Sybil became pregnant at her tenth foster home and gave up her daughter to adoption. She records her life with a stolen school camcorder in hopes to share her side of the story it with her one day,
Though she is prone to freezing, along the way, Nushka discovers there is no situation she can’t talk herself out of or talk someone into. Through trial and tribulation, she comes into herself as a charming, sarcastic go-getter who longs for a place in the world. Still, when she's feeling lost in the abyss of mental health issues, she turns to her bellybutton, a keepsake from birth, that she keeps in her pocket like a compass. A Bulgarian tradition where bellybuttons are preserved to determine the fate of the child, she is desperate to find a place for it and therefore her destiny.
Attempting to camouflage her depression and worthlessness, Sybil would rather punch her way through than face her vulnerability. Sybil is unapologetic, brute, and solves arguments with her fists firmly clenched rather than with her words; she isn’t afraid of much, because she’s been through worse.
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Now already on her eleventh foster home, Sybil has seen enough life to build a tower of unhealed wounds around her, keeping everyone out and trapping her self-hate in.
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Secretly, she yearns for an education, believing it can shield her from repeating her family's failures.
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Through her journey and budding friendship with Nushka, Sybil learns that softness is even more powerful than her anger. Each Craigslist, provides new perspective, exposing beauty amongst America's ugly underbelly. Sybil begins to temper her explosive reactions, finally uncurling her fists.
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*UN-FUN FACT: Doctors in Florida prescribe 10 times more oxycodone pills than every other state in the country combined. People come from all over the Southeast to visit the state's pain clinics. A major reason pill mills have proliferated in Florida is because, unlike most other states, it lacks a system for monitoring drug prescriptions.
Despite her charisma, Nushka suffers from debilitating bouts of severe panic attacks, sporadically turning her world upside down, though you'd never be able to tell she was having one, she has perfected the art of hiding her panic & anxiety from potential onlookers through a slew of OCD rituals. Still often finds herself frozen.
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Nushka desperately desires to make the home in America her mother could never provide due to her own mental health struggles.
Mature for her age on account of having to grow up too fast, blunt, and a Bulgarian immigrant. Although she was born in Bulgaria, her accent is undetectable, a tool she uses as a disguise around Americans.
She struggles with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, which is either the catalyst or an extension of her fanatic need to control and stay a step ahead. Although she enters foster care a month after her mother's suicide, she is ferociously optimistic, even in the face of utter bleakness.
Concerned she might follow in her mother's footsteps, she records her thoughts just in case she ever loses them--a plan to bring her back to herself. She knows a little about a lot and uses her knowledge to tackle obstacles with quick wit and gusto.
