your name: Aileen or Lilac if you prefer. I'm not fussy.
age: Twenty years of age D:
role play experience: six or seven years, maybe longer
gender: female
contact information: e-mail or PM. Smoke signals work oddly well, too.
other characters: Zilch... for now...

name: Jonathan Alexander Miller
age: Twenty-eight
gender: Male
group: Doctor
hair: Dark brown, short, unstyled unless he can be bothered to pull a comb through it in the morning.
eyes: Dark brown
weight: 63kg
height: 6ft 1in
distinguishable features: An acid burn scar on his abdomen caused by an accident in a first-year university chemistry class which was difficult to treat due to Jonathan's unwillingness to cooperate. Obviously this can't be seen unless he had his shirt off, so... yeah.

likes: Mania, his work, his family, the beauty of life around him, improving mental health care, music, art, films, puzzles, reading, learning something new every day
dislikes: Depression, patients who refuse help, people who ostracise the mentally ill, people who assume the mentally ill are just attention seekers, bullies, doctors who couldn't care less, the media, garlic, the side-effects caused by olanzapine (including drowsiness, sedation, lethargy and insomnia)
strengths: Jonathan possesses great intellect, and is skilled at verbal altercations rather than physical ones. If the timing is right, he is a quick thinker and is brilliantly imaginative. He learns skills and facts very quickly, and if his mood is right, he can be an excellent public speaker.
weaknesses: Physically, he is incredibly lacking. He cannot hold his own in a fight and as a result, is very docile. At times, he can become withdrawn and lethargic, and he considers this symptom a weakness as it affects his professional life, making him unable to communicate. He is very stubborn which can mean bad consequences for both himself and his patients when he is challenged - he will refuse to let go and must have the last word.
goals: He hopes to overcome his disorder one day so that he can live without fear of being ostracised. He hopes one day to hold the title of professor.
fears: He hasn't yet suffered an episode in public during his professional career, but he still dreads the day and is convinced that it will happen.
secrets: Jonathan suffers from schizoaffective disorder. The mood symptoms are not medicated but the psychotic symptoms are using olanzapine. However, the dosage has been increased several times due to it not working as well as it should. As a result, the side-effects can be pretty bad and his prescription may eventually change.
overall persona: Jonathan is a quiet, sweet gentleman who wouldn't hurt a fly. He might hurt a wasp, because they appear to serve no other function than to cause harm to others, but it would have to have caught him in a really bad mood first. He is shy, but friendly, and does not antagonise people needlessly. He doesn't see the point in becoming aggressive with others, especially if he doesn't yet know the person very well. The way he sees it, aggression and arrogance is only going to bring the same kind of behaviour his way, and that is never desirable.

A determined man, he has struggled his entire adult life to seem normal, to try to think as normal, to learn as normal. It has been difficult, but since he is so stubborn, once he had his heart set on something, he will pursue it endlessly. Whether it's that coveted PhD in psychiatric medicine or an old antique trinket box or that snazzy new phone he really really likes, he wants it, he needs it, he must have it. That said, he does always make time for others, especially his patients and co-workers. A kind, caring type of person, which is perfect for his line of work, he is able to put aside all his problems, no matter what they are, for another person. However, he often finds himself scared and alone. His love and compassion for his fellow man means that he provides all with a calm, caring shoulder to cry on, but forgets to find one on which he can cry.

mother: Dolly Miller, 54, school teacher
father: John Miller, 58, engineer
siblings: Danny Michael Miller, eighteen, student
other family: Grandparents (maternal), Nora and Francis Kilkenny, retired. Both paternal grandparents died (within weeks of one another) when he was three.
children: None
birthplace: Berkeley, California
date of birth: December 27th
overall history: Jonathan Alexander Miller was born at home in California to proud school teacher Dolly and her husband John, an engineer. Jonathan had a very loving family, and he rarely wanted for anything, but when he turned five, the family was struck my mental illness. His mother was found unfit to work and for a few years was on loxapine for patanoid schizophrenia. Bright little Jonathan noticed that when she took the pills, she would later twitch a lot or shake, her speech would be slurred, her sleep pattern was destroyed and she occasionally had difficulty swallowing.He didn't understand why the pills seemed to be making her worse instead of better. People seemed to need to take care of her a lot and behaved as though she was frail and useless, though that only appeared to make her feel bad. One day when his mother had just taken her medicine, he tugged on her skirt and asked her why she had to take the nasty pills. She simply smiled, ruffled his hair and said "I need to, so that I can think properly". Thus began his lifelong fascination with psychiatry and psychopharmacology. Little Jonathan would even take her pills and any new medicines she was prescribed to read the inserts, and though he didn't fully understand, he was amazed that a small piece of what looked like chalk could make his mother think in a different way. Just before his tenth birthday, his little brother Danny was born. Still obsessed with psychiatry as they grew, he attempted to teach his brother everything he knew on the subject, but Danny wasn't really interested. It frustrated him that no-one else seemed to share his love of the sciences, but his mother always made sure that he knew how proud she was of him. He treated her as his protector, and even though her husband was also treating her as though she was made of glass, she knew her little boy understood her pain. Unfortunately, he would soon understand it all too well.

Brilliant-minded Jonathan went on to attend university. He took medicine with the intent of specialising in psychiatry. Midway into his studies, however, his perceptions began to change. Thinking became difficult, he suffered terrible mood swings, he heard voices that came from outside of him, talking to him but he didn't know where from. He became withdrawn and frightened, but he refused to tell anyone what was going on. He felt that he should study regardless, having seen how even his own family had treated his mother while she had been sick. It was eventually discovered that there was something wrong when in a crowded library, though it was painfully quiet, he crumpled to the floor screaming in anguish for everyone to "please just shut up!" Two of his professors managed to usher him out of the library and he was taken in an ambulance in hysterics to the nearest hospital. Given a small dose of diazepam, he eventiually calmed. A psychiatrist saw him almost immediately and he caved, telling him everything he had been seeing, hearing, feeling over the last few years. Slowly, he was brought back to 'normalcy' and allowed to complete his final year at university, but he had had to take a year out for therapy, including drug therapy. During this difficult time, he confided in his mother. He told her how he often felt lonely and sobbed when he told her of his horror upon realising that she must have gone through such horrible turmoil, too. And yet she had never let on. She smiled comfortingly and said that they were so alike. She was just sorry that she had passed down bad genes.

Jonathan never did make a full recovery but continues to take his medication. At first, he was put on risperidol, which caused him to gain weight very rapidly and lose tremendous amounts of sleep, Sometimes he'd stay awake for weeks on end. Realising quickly that this was not the drug for him, they tried him on olanzapine. Oddly enough, he lost weight on lanzapine despite the high rate of weight gain in patients, but then again, not all patients suffer the same side effects. He did still suffer insomnia, but not nearly as bad as before, and he can feel too sedate or lethargic at times. He expressed these worries to his mother, who always came back with the same response. "I love you, Jonathan. I am always so proud of you, my strong, beautiful boy." However, she began to relapse into her psychosis, and he stopped 'bothering her' with his problems. He felt like he had failed, and still feels that way. He doesn't want to cause her any more distress, and he certainly doesn't want anyone to stigmatise him because of his disorder, especially now that he has a steady job and career. He is a competent doctor who follows his prescriptions obediently. Why should he have to feel like he is somehow a lesser being just because his thought processes are different?