About

Throughout her life, she has always struggled with chronic leg and body pain. It ran in the family, and she never put a lot of thought into researching it, more just using the same tricks her family used to live with it. When she was a young adult, she felt a calling and ended up going through the process to convert to conservative judaism. She practices perhaps in a more lax way now, but she still holds her faith strongly in her life and makes sure to live jewishly as much as she can. She ended up getting a master's in English, followed by a teaching certificate, and now teaches English classes for middle school and high school.

Emilia

After going to a party on the invitation of a friend from her work, she meets Emilia. They end up hitting it off, spending the rest of the night talking to each other and realizing they have a fair few interests in common. Emilia enjoys a lot of the same shows Rachel does, and they promise to meet up sometime again soon. Rachel has read books but not seen their movies, while Emilia has seen the movies but not read the books, and they decided to make the other read and watch what they're missing out on. Their friendship goes on like this, built through constant movie nights leading to the occassional sleepover and then to weekend lunches and excursions, opening up to each other more and more.

Things began to truly heat up when Emilia offers to massage Rachel's leg to help her with her physical therapy, and Emilia admits she had been researching different chronic problems that Rachel had mentioned she could have. Emilia had been taking a massage class either way in order to get certified, and she persisted in her offer to help Rachel who ends up agreeing. It helps her leg greatly, and it becomes a regular occurence. It becomes harder and harder for the two of them to ignore the mutual tension and their feelings for each other.

Still, even as they grew closer and began to truly fall in love, Rachel struggled with her own personal issues. Emilia was bubbly and happy-go-lucky and Rachel continued to be a cynical pessimisst with a short fuse. With Emilia's massages, her leg became a bit easier to manage, but it never went away. She had a lot of anger built up in her over the years of struggling with the pain, with being dismissed by doctors, being sneered at by others, and it was hard to let go of. Emilia tentatively offered more and more new ways to deal with her disability - buying her helpful pillows, gadgets, furniture, clothes, anything she found in her research that others said helped them in their chronic pain. It inspired Rachel to look more into her own disability and to focus on what people her age were doing to help themselves, rather than worrying about her family or what doctors suggested. As she reached out about it, she began to make a few friends online that had similar issues, and she found herself able to talk about things she had always bottled up or not even realized she felt in the first place. With Emilia's support and encouragement, she was able to come to better terms with her own disability and to find better ways to cope with it. While she would never be free of it, she was able to see herself as a whole person on her own and to see that she could live a happy life that was as painless as possible.

Through all this time, they still stayed as 'just friends' - Emilia insisting she cared for her friend and wanted to see her healthy and happy, and Rachel being too flustered by the attention and too overwhelmed by other issues to challenge it. However, when she was offered a job that would require moving to another state, the question came up a lot sooner than either of them thought it would. Did they have something that meant Rachel should stay? Did they have something that meant that Rachel could ask her to move with her?

In the end, Rachel declined the offer, but she and Emilia ended up moving into an apartment together. Emilia insisted her lease was up soon anyway, and Rachel had already made arrangements to move in anticipation of the possible job relocation.

In the Future

After they married and their love was cemented into their hearts, Rachel continued to be a teacher and Emilia thrived in the place of being a domestic partner. She took to preparing meals for Rachel with vigor, and found time to flourish in her own hobbies as a creative: dabbling in crocheting, sewing, painting, even jewelry making. Rachel isn't one to have much of a creative mind or hand, but she finds great comfort and a feeling of home in the paintings and projects that litter their shared house.

Relationships

Emilia [ Wife ]

They have been married for years now - their story focuses on how they first met and short stories of their lives after they are happily married. When they first met Rachel was a much different person, and had a lot of anger. Emilia was a bright spot for her, and helped her learn new ways to cope with things and to learn to trust others and they fell in love.