Life in Riverland

Aurionne Mendez: Normal-ish

Once upon a time there was a girl. A pretty normal girl, with brown hair and dark green eyes. She was born in Texas, but her mother died a few years after her birth. When her father remarried, her stepmother gave birth to twins, a girl and a boy. Her siblings looked different than her, with golden hair and navy eyes. Her siblings and her grew up together in Texas, but they moved to South Dakota when she was 11. This girl was me. My name is Aurionne Desirée Mendez. I was born March 2nd, 1996 in Midland, Texas to Manuel and Jasmin Sauciér Mendez. My mom died when I was a year and a half old, so I never really knew her. However, when my dad married Katrina Eriksson in late 1998, I began to consider her as my real mom rather than my stepmom. In early 2000, my half-siblings, Ilena Jéanelle and Christopher Manuel were born. They quickly became my very best friends, and they helped me with the transition to South Dakota. Like most tweens, I suffered from depression. I even turned a bit emo. I wore a lot of black, I put on heavy makeup, and I dyed my hair black. I liked a boy who was almost the opposite of me. He was always an optimist, and he was my best friend. His name was Andrew. He helped me through my depression, but he died when I was in eighth grade. After he died, his parents were going through all of his stuff and gave me a call. I walked two blocks to his house (Rapid City is not that big) and picked up a note he'd wrote for me a few days prior to his death. It said he knew he was going to die, but not to let that affect my depression issues. He told me he loved me. I dyed my hair back to my original color, and tried to move on with my life. It helped when I got a video camera for my fifteenth birthday. I decided my emotional vent was going to be YouTube. On March 5th, 2011, I uploaded my first YouTube video. I uploaded a new one every week, and my loyal subscribers helped me on a new journey: The Voice. I won the competition and became a singer. When I signed the record deal, I decided to move to Hollywood, where my cousin, Jolie Phoenix (yes, Jolie can be a guy's name), had already bought a house. I was seventeen. I dyed my hair again, this time blonde with a reddish brown Ombré. I created an image for myself as an artist, and also became a part time actress. As time went on and I acquired more fans and more money, I decided to invest in oil stock in North Dakota. Well, it did fairly well—so well, in fact, that I moved to Bismarck to oversee the oil production. A couple of years passed, and my family had moved to Riverland to be closer to friends. I wasn't really doing much in Bismarck anymore, so I decided, "Why not?" I moved to Riverland in October of 2017, when I was 21. And that, my friends, is how this whole story got started. After the whirlwind the past four years, I just wanted my new life in Riverland to be somewhat normal-ish.