The Susurrus Echoes Of My Mind

(Before you read this: Sydnie's pronouns are they/them, as they are nonbinary femme. Also there are mentions of self harm, and abuse, just so people are aware.)

Perhaps you've heard of Sydnie Beaupré, or maybe you haven't; either way, you're here reading their story today.

Sydnie was born at two pounds, five ounces, three months premature, on September twenty-seventh, nineteen-ninety-three to proud parents, Martine, and Daniel. Sydnie died about a hundred or more times after that, thanks to a hole in their mitral valve. They were put on a respirator, had a gavage, and their diapers consisted of surgical masks, as the newborn diapers were too big for them.

Eventually, at nine months or so, they allowed Sydnie allowed to go home, but, of course, their mother then became ill, and their dedicated maternal grandmother, Irene, took Sydnie in, as her father had to work long hours. She tried to establish a bond between Sydnie’s mum and her, but the baby bonded with her grandma while she took care of me and sort of imprinted on her as her mother figure.

Sydnie talked early, around the one-year mark, and learned how to walk late - at age two. That's how their mother knew something was...wrong, with Sydnie.

At age three and up, Sydnie was often told that she sounded like a little old lady because she was talking in full sentences and didn’t mispronounce any words; essentially, her language skills were superb and beyond her young age. But still, Sydnie preferred to play pretend far more often than kids her age normally did, and they had no interest in arts and crafts.

When Sydnie started Daycare, their mother was informed that they refused to create any artwork like the other kids because they couldn’t hold the pencils, crayons, pens, and scissors like the other kids could, was only interested in reading books well over her young age range. Sydnie was diagnosed with ADD, and started occupational therapy for their developmental delays. By then, Sydnie couldn't get enough of literature, thanks to their grandmother and their father, who both have a passion for reading and language, but Sydnie lacked many imperative skills for someone their age, and so even though their imagination was superb, and their reading skills were amazing despite being diagnosed with dyslexia, they were still labeled as weird by the kids in their class, and even teachers found Sydnie to be a bit of an odd child; sweet, certainly intelligent, and yet somehow failing most subjects, and ostrasized by the other kids for being what they dubbed as weird.

Sydnie began to tell their own stories, bad ones they’d tell you if you asked them, but stories just the same, and it was then that they realized that it was what they wanted to do for the rest of their life, as a career; tell stories.

At age fourteen, Sydnie was officially diagnosed with ADHD, Dyscalculia, Dyslexia, Insomnia, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, mild OCD, Joint Hypermobility Syndrome, Ulcerative Colitis, Leukopenia, and depression. It was also at this age that Sydnief found out that their parents were doing some questionable things, and that the family had to go bankrupt and move out of the house Sydnie’d lived in their whole life, because they were losing it. To deal with it, Sydnie started writing their first novel, Time, and while Sydnie believes it was terribly written, they still have the original version up on Wattpad for everybody to read, because they are proud of their first attempt at a YA story.

Sydnie and their family moved closer to Sydnie’s school after the bankruptcy, and at age fifteen, Sydnie met their first serious boyfriend, Liam. Now, they want to preface this with: Liam is not a bad person. He was simply mentally ill and autistic, and was unmedicated. But…after a year of dating, he changed who he'd presented himself as being, when Sydnie and him first got together. He started calling Sydnie annoying, and stupid. He’d tell them they did things the wrong way and that Sydnie was putting on a stupid act for attention. Sydnie retreated into their writing, and decided that they wouldn't let anyone read their writing ever again, without first getting express permission.

At age sixteen, in grade eleven, Sydnie couldn’t pay attention in class one day, so they started writing their second novel, Dark One, on a napkin and a paper cup. Later, it would be typed up, and shown to their teacher, and they would be told that it was an excellent start to something that Sydnie never could've known would kickstart their career.

Sydnie began writing any chance they could get after they started writing Dark One. They wrote in between classes, and at home, and even on the bus between stops; it was an obsession.

But after Sydnie left high school, they panicked; tehy'd not finished their novel yet, and they had no job, plus their boyfriend Liam was moving to Sherbrooke, and he said he was worried about a long-distance relationship, that he’d find someone else, or Sydnie would. So, they moved in together.

This was the worst mistake of Sydnie’s life for their writing career.

They tried to keep our little one-bedroom apartment clean, and, they did a good job, but they had no time to write because by then, they’d become subservient to Liam, less tough in character, a severe people pleaser, and their self-worth was… nonexistent. Liam would get mad at them for anything and everything, so they never knew if what they were doing would set him off. The sound of their laptop was too much for Liam to handle, and so Sydnie avoided writing on it.

Then, one day Liam had a bysicle accident and got really badly injured, and Sydnie stopped taking care of themself to take care of him, which caused Sydnie to get tonsilitis and have to go back to their parents’ house for a week to recover.

When they got back to their one-bedroom apartment, it was a crazy experience. Laundry was everywhere. Dishes were all over the countertops and in the sink. The rice cooker was on top of the washing machine for some reason, and there was more dirty laundry in teh washing machine and on top of the dryer. The final nail in the coffin was that the bathtub was full of dirty dishes submerged in moldy, bleach-filled water.

Sydnie called their best friend James, and sobbed into the phone. He told them to remain calm, and not to do the dishes. But of course, Sydnie did them all, and even greeted Liam with a smile when he came home from school.

It was a few months after that that Sydnie broke up with Liam, and moved back in with their parents that their sister Sam moved in with them, from Michigan, and all their friends had a party to celebrate her return to Canada. That’s where Sydnie met Corey or rather, re-met him, since they'd gone to high school together and Sydnie had always found him attractive though tall and quiet so he intimmidated her. But at that time, Corey had a girlfriend and Sydnie’d just left Liam, so she didn’t want to look at Corey as a romantic candidate. Sydnie simply appreciated a newfound friendship, even though the attraction was mutual, little did they know.

Meanwhile, Sydnie worked on their novel Dark One and started another book which would later become Such Exquisite Calamity, their most popular book to date. And then, like an idiot, they got back together with Liam. They were lonely. Can you blame them? He took Sydnie to Toronto, their mutual friend Jim as the driver, to see a concert. The only issue with that was? Sydnie didn’t have their I.D because they weren’t expecting to go anywhere but school and home that day – yes, school, as in more adult education, as they'd failed getting their math credits in Sherbrooke and had been kicked out of college. They spent the night at his cousin’s house, and a few months later, the two got back together. Sydnie didn't love him anymore, not really, although she was deluded into believing that she did. The truth is that Sydnie simply wished he would love her the way she wanted to be loved by somebody.

And this is where Sydnie’s writing really was affected the most. Sydnie was writing scenes about depression, and suicidal ideation, and self-harm, and a lot of it resonated with them because they were going through it themselves. They may not have been peeing the bed like their character Cayden, not to be confused with their nephew who shares the same name, but Sydnie was cutting themselves on a monthly basis, and wishing their bad health would just take them to Hell, or wherever it is you go when you're not really a good person, but pretend to be - or at least, that was Sydnie's thinking at the time.

Liam’d definitely become calmer, which was nice for Sydnie, but the damage was done, and Sydnie had become a people-pleasing, timid, and shy person thanks to him, and they were suffering from psychosis something fierce thanks to unmedicated Schizoaffective-Bipolar. They fought less as a couple, but they still fought, usually because Sydnie had done something Liam deemed the “wrong” way, or Sydnie had been triggered by Liam's behaviour in some way and was quite literally losing their mind over something that probably seemed to him like a nonissue.

In their late twenties, Sydnie managed to get their high school diploma, and ended up getting into college three separate times, and trade school once after that - but hey, at least they still finished all of their Literature, Poetry, and Creative Writing classes and managed to finish writing their novel Dark One at the age of twenty-four, and Such Exquisite Calamity at age twenty-six.

One day, before Sydnie had dropped out of CEGEP their final time, a Creative Writing teacher told Sydnie that they would never amount to anything, so they put their first ever copy of Dark One on his desk the next day, and said, “Tell that to my fans; the only thing you’ve written is the textbook that we barely use as source material. Meanwhile, I'm selling books daily.”

Now, Sydnie is thirty years old, and has been in a relationship with Corey for nearly five years, and he encourages Sydnie to write every single day, and in Mar 2023 Sydnie released Such Exquisite Calamity which had been under a different title previously, and it is one of the most popular books on Bookstragram today.

In Sydnie’s Young Adult, Paranormal Romance/Urban Fantasy, Such Exquisite Calamity, two teens, Spencer and Cayden have always known that they were different from each of their parents, but when Spencer saves Cayden from a stab wound using only her tears and sheer willpower, they find out exactly what they are: the only two of their kind, born under a prophecy. Not Caster, not Familiar, but an impossible combination of both known as The Two, or The Lovers. Stumbling through the new world of Casters, Familiars and Demigods together proves dangerous for the pair, and unwanted enemies arise as emotions between them become more and more complicated. Will Cayden and Spencer be able to find themselves amidst the chaos? Or will they succumb to the power of those trying to stop them?

Mental health plays a big part in Cayden's character arc, because not only does he have to fight metaphorical demons, but he also has to face the fact that he is half magical creature, and so is his best friend, and that they will never be normal teenagers because there will always be someone out there who recognizes them as "the freaky duo" as some kids at their school have taken to calling them. Cayden must face his own past, to be able to properly be in a relationship with Spencer; if you haven't read it, you wouldn't know this, but before he kisses her or does something physical to her, he usually asks permission, because he respects her and her choices, but also because he knows how it feels to have it forced on him, and he doesn't want that for Spencer. He wants to be the complete opposite of Jack, his past abuser, when it comes to doing anything physical with Spencer. This resonates with Sydnie a lot, because they were sexually assaulted at a young age, and then nearly again at nineteen years of age.

In summation, Sydnie would be nothing without storytelling, and the ability to escaape into a good book, and they owe their success to their experiences in life; they know what it is to go through hardship and what it takes to come back out the other end, stronger than before, all thanks to books and reading.