MTB - Chase Grayson
Martyr the Bride cast and brand insignia
The characters: Hunter (beanie), Layne (short blonde), Chase (middle) River (scrubs in the back) and Pickett (punk redhead).
Hunter is the band’s bass player and founder. Layne is Chase’s guardian angel and is the deceased older brother of Pickett, whose real name is Laura. Chase is the band’s frontman and is a life-long writer. River is Chase’s lover in the first half of the story, and Pickett is a patient at the Ezra facility, where Chase and River work.
The Inspiration for Chase
I have this mental image in my head that I saw the first time in mid 2022, of this fictionalized version of myself in the passenger seat of some guy’s car, the door is open as pavement rushes beneath and she’s got her head thrown back in the wind while hanging halfway out of the vehicle, cackling and hollering with joy. This ‘me’ had my natural blonde hair color and wore a lacy lingerie teddy in red. She was sexy, wild, and on fire next to the man she was obsessed with.
Chase came to me as this sly-eyed seductress. I saw flowing wavy hair, long thick legs, and clothes that were always in some phase of undress, falling off her frame with ease. She was young, saw herself through the ‘male gaze’ and leaned into this image. There was no plot, no character development, just the image of playfulness, sex appeal, and rebellion. Chase was what I wanted to be back then. She was free.
I’m not sure when or how I came up with her name. But I’ve always loved sporty boyish names for girls, that’s part of why I go by Kai. I like the masculine energy of the name. Her full name in the story is Chasity Grayson, but friends and lovers call her ‘Chase’ since it rolls off the tongue. The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. She’s a woman longing for something, chasing after something - if you will.
“Steady As We Burn, It was all for love” - Tech Noir, Carpenter Brut Remix
From Wikipedia: Limerence is the mental state of being madly in love or intensely infatuated when reciprocation of the feeling is uncertain. This state is characterized by intrusive thoughts and idealization of the loved one (also called "crystallization"), typically with a desire for reciprocation to form a relationship. This is accompanied by feelings of ecstasy or despair, depending on whether one's feelings seem to be reciprocated or not. Research on the biology of romantic love indicates that the early stage of intense romantic love (also called passionate love) resembles addiction, but academics do not currently agree on how love addictions are defined.
Chase is someone that always wanted to be accepted. She gave up her favorite music because her family deemed it ‘too secular’ and not ‘honoring God’, stashing away her poetry and not singing much in front of others. She marries a young man from her small town that everyone deems as a good God fearing man, named Arthur (or Art), and it becomes clear that the two are incompatible. Art is serious and isolates himself in his passions and studies leaving Chase lonely for days and weeks on end. She longs to have children but the couple are never intimate.
Then, she meets a man who she finds attractive, who lights her up, pays attention to her and she gets hooked on the attention. River is to Chase what opiates are to someone looking to get high. She is so enamored with the idea of him and of them being together that she overlooks how cruel and cold he is to her. River plays hot and cold and keeps Chase on a swivel.
All the sudden, the seemingly well-adjusted woman is reduced back to the lonely little girl that wanted her family’s attention, love and approval, and she wants it from River. He isn’t able to give it to her, though.
“Don’t Plant Seeds in Fields That Are Barren.” - W.T.M (River)
This is something the real River (not his name) said to me in April of 2022 when he tried to push me away. In the story, River says it to Chase.
She, like me, was trapped in a love-sick trance, in a state of mind called limerence.
Let me tell you something - it has been over three years since ‘River’ broke my heart, and I have absolutely never been the same. Those eight long months of limerence were like being in psychosis. I was not okay back then, there is nothing as powerful as that type of yearning, and in my opinion, nothing more dangerous than it. Limerence for this emotionally unavailable player had me writing suicide notes, cutting my wrists, drinking and driving, and keeping the weirdest hours so that I could always be at his beck and call. I look back at this time period and feel awe for the power this connection had over me. I was trying to subsidize a father’s love, a husband’s care through a man that saw me as just another ‘friend with benefits’ on his roster. To me, he was everything. To him, I was entertainment.
I had planned to die in December of 2022. By that point, ‘River’ was chasing someone else and I found out the hard way and couldn’t take it. My ex-husband and I divorced, and he forbade me from doing so. I remember him telling me to give life three years before I commit to wanting to die. I agreed. Why three years? Because ‘Art’ loved arbitrary numbers, he explained it was a great way to add something grounding to any decisions. My best friend stayed with me for a week and the real-life ‘Hunter’ stayed close by my side during this dark time. I no longer talk to ‘Hunter’ (or ‘River’, for that matter) but I will always be grateful for him being there with me through the worst nights.
Since I was forced to go on living, I wanted it to be worth it. If I must be alive, so be it, but I’m going to make it count for something.
“Let no suffering be in vain.” I heard these words in my head a lot, and I knew I was going to write about this mess - not from the perspective of objective truth, but from my emotional truth. It felt like hell. It felt like hypnosis and hysteria.
In the story, Chase has a history of disturbing hallucinations that worsen the more she falls into limerence and into drink. She develops habits similar to her absentee father, and her madness leads to her seeing angels like Layne and Nightshade. She starts conversing with entities that no one else can see, and it’s here that she both unravels and finds herself.
Chase is based off parts of my personality, to be specific, she is comprised of who I was as a young teen and my rising ascendant sign, which is Cancer. Chase is emotional, sensitive, nurturing and dreams of a simple life with a husband and children. She’s shown that she’s willing to sacrifice her dreams of being a musician for her desire to be loved and to be a mother. (As a side note, the rest of my personality is split between Pickett and Nightshade. Pickett is made up of my anger/ unhealed trauma and my moon sign, Leo. She’s proud, bold, and not afraid to be the center of attention. She craves fame and stardom. Nightshade is my sun sign, Sagittarius. She’s the ‘devil on your shoulder’ - as in, she’s the philosophical one that gets Chase to explore her beliefs and her desires. Nightshade and Chase engage in spirited conversations about God, the Church, womanhood, marriage, sex, and the book of Genesis in the Bible. Nightshade’s name is a play off the belladonna flower, and is a nod to the myth of Lilith.)
End of the Chase
Chase’s main arc and character development centers around a spiritual pivot from dogmatic religion to embracing who she really is. To pull from the short story that this is all based on: “She knew exactly what sort of feral creature she was, and she was unafraid of this.” She develops confidence and self respect, and does the thing she’s afraid of: letting go of people who are against her and facing her fear of loneliness and abandonment. She achieves this by refusing to abandon herself any further. This is a ‘coming of age story’, but not about teenagers, that’s been done a million times. This is about the lives of many, many women who leave old lives behind and strike out on their own, putting their faith (and fates) into their own hands.