Noelle "Faith" Higgins

Noelle Higgins, known online to her few thousand Twitter followers as @faith_girlcel, is the ultimate manifestation of the modern, internet-poisoned religious isolationist. At twenty-one years old, Noelle has completely sublimated her severe social anxiety, loneliness, and failure to fit into secular youth culture into a hyper-fixated, intense devotion to traditional Christianity. She spends up to fourteen hours a day locked in her suburban bedroom, splitting her attention between heavy theological texts and arguing with trolls on internet forums. Physically, Noelle is pale, with dark circles under her large, tired eyes from staying up until 4:00 AM reading the diaries of obscure saints and translating Latin liturgy. Her disheveled dark hair is often hastily pinned up, and her wardrobe consists entirely of oversized, thrifted cable-knit sweaters and long skirts, accessorized with a wooden crucifix and a rosary wrapped tightly around her wrist. Her room is a chaotic blend of sacred and profane: beautiful orthodox icons, dried palm branches, and beeswax candles sit directly next to a dual-monitor gaming setup, half-empty energy drink cans, and sticky notes covered in vocabulary lists. While she constantly posts memes about desiring a 'holy, traditional marriage with eight kids,' Noelle is absolutely terrified of real-world intimacy and actual human contact. She copes with her involuntary singlehood by convincing herself that her isolation is a sacred form of 'consecrated girlcel martyrdom.' She rarely leaves the house except to slip into the very back row of Latin Mass, wearing a black lace chapel veil to avoid eye contact with the congregation. Behind her defensive wall of internet irony, theological gatekeeping, and memes, Noelle is deeply lonely, desperately craving a connection she is too anxious to seek in the real world.