maya xiaoqing | d9 | FIN

maya ☯ xiaoqing
female * sixteen * district nine * odair

"The secret to change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting or the old, but on building the new."

Curious is a thing that I've always been.  I strive forward to try and live a whimsical, carefree life.  I often find myself wandering aimlessly around the district, running my hands and fingers across everything I find.  The feel of everything intrigues me, it draws me in.  My heart is only content when I get tired, which isn't often, so sometimes my older brother comes looking for me.  I don't stay too far from home, so I'm usually found in a short space of time.

The one thing I hate most about myself in my amazing ability to make a fool of myself without even trying. We've all come across the girl in our school who is associated with tripping over, slipping up and asking irrelevant questions.  That girl is me.  I am all the clumsiness in the world channeled into one human being.  I wish that I could change it for a better trait, but then I wouldn't be me, and I'd hate that.  One of the hardest things is to accept and love yourself - it's certainly something I struggle with.

But under pressure, I am reborn.  Forget the clumsy girl who dropped her lunch in the school hall, I'm comfortable and ready.  In my tests, I'm always the first to finish.  The teachers think it's a bad thing, repeating themselves week after week, asking if I've "checked all your answers?" It gets annoying, but I'm used to it.  To me, it's one of those things that is so familiar to me that I couldn't imagine life without it.  

Ideas always find themselves marching into my head.  I have a notebook in the top of my dark, wooden bedside table which has vague outlines of all of the ones I've come up with.  I try to record them all, because I don't know when I might need them.  We all live in a world of opportunity and confusion, and maybe in a distant future, one of my ideas will make a change.  Most of the ideas are small, like a quick and easy way to remember how to solve my maths homework, but I know that some of them are pure gold.

My mother would always say I looked like a porcelain doll, smiling each day away like it was nothing.  With my somewhat prominent facial structure, I can understand her.  I take care of my body.  My skin is washed with oils and essences my mother has picked up throughout her lifetime.  My hair is drowned in water and some sort of flower oil.  She says it makes your hair shinier, though I'm controversial.  I can't tell if it's really working.  The long, midnight blocks which fall either side of my face are silky and smooth, just how I like them to be.  When the wind comes and blows my hair into my face and eyes - I like it.  The feeling of thousands of unique strands fascinates and relaxes me.

I'd grown up in a tall family.  My father is over 6 feet tall and my mother is at the top of the 5 feet band.  My older brother is a clone of my father.  But he's protective of me and understands me.  My father doesn't get me at all.  I question his morals at times. Standing at 5 feet 5, I'm slightly above the average for girls my age.  I've never really thought much of height. Some people are tall and towering, whilst others are small and short.  I'll probably end up somewhere in between.

The almost black eyes which sit firmly on my face are my mother's.  She'd inherited from her mother, and was now passing them down to me.  They're like mysterious globes - glistening crystals which I look out of.  I do admit that they are pretty and some of the other girls are envious of them, but I don't like to compliment myself.  Sometimes the ink of my eye spills out into the bright white, but shrinks again once I step back into the unknown.  

But my face has a darker side, a past only known my a few souls.  If you look closely, above my right eyebrow, you'll see a scar the size of a needle.  The scar holds many horrible memories and thoughts from my childhood.  Thoughts and memories I hope I'll never have to think and see again, but I know that one day they will all flood out into the world.  And that would be my worst nightmare.

I can still remember the first time I'd achieved the impossible.  A cartwheel had always seemed so impossible to me, and I'd never been sure why.  I'd struggled to extend my thin frame to its full length, and my feet would often curl floppily towards my thighs.  I practiced and practiced until finally, I was perfect at it. For once, I was actually proud of myself, and it was a feeling I loved.  I'd hope it wouldn't go away so quickly, but it rapidly turned to excitement.  Still, I continued to cartwheel around the dusty, dirty floor until the night drew in.  

The breeze that night was so cold.  My pale blue curtains danced prettily in the chilling winds which forced themselves through my window.  But the peacefulness of this moment was beaten and bruised when shouts and screams came from the living room down the hallway.  At first I was cautious, but upon opening my door I discovered I shouldn't have ever been afraid.  It was my mother, giving birth to my baby sister.  She was so small when she came out, she was our family's new treasure.  The first time I held her in my arms I felt such pride in knowing I'd be a big sister. Emotion overwhelmed me and I began to well up for the first time in years.  I wish she'd stayed so warm and precious.

I'd never thought of myself as different.  I was the same as everyone else, I thought I was just like them.  But as I grew I noticed I wasn't so similar.  And they did too. The memory of the schoolchildren in the playground is a hard thing for me, but important.  I didn't know what the names they called me meant, but it hurt me.  I could feel the words writing themselves onto my face, my arms and my legs with permanent marker.  The people who I thought were my friends labelled me as different and wouldn't stop doing so.  Once the first labelled had been tied, others kept on coming.  I hated it.  I knew I wasn't strong enough to retaliate and show them who I really am, so I used all their hatred cast upon me to do better in myself and prove that I was like them, but better.  And then all of a sudden, I fit in.

"Change is inevitable.  Progress is a choice."