Rix McKinney: District 8

Name: Tarix McKinney (Rix)
Age: 18
Gender: Male
District: District 8


~~~Appearance

You’re asking me to describe my looks—what am I supposed to say to that? Why? I don't want you to pity me or feel disgust towards me because of what I look like. I don't want to be judged by my appearance. As much as I don't want to....I guess I'll have to tell you the truth.

I was born with raging blue eyes: I can't say that I didn't like them. If there was one thing that I did like about my appearance, it had to have been my eyes. I could catch people's attention with them, I could look at them and keep their focused gaze. My eyes were strong, constrasting greatly from the rest of me. However, as years passed by, a new shade of blue started to form, not around the pupils, but rather in the whites of my eyes. It was extremely abnormal and unnatural. It definitely attracted a few confused stares. However, I knew what the blue-gray color meant: it was a permanent mark of the haunting twisted reality that my life had been thrown into. It was a symptom of brittle bone disease, or Osteogenesis Imperfecta, Basically, Osteogenesis Imperfecta (OI) means being born with defective or insufficient amounts of collagen, a protein in connective tissues. Because I have Type III OI, having blue-tinted sclerae (the whites of the eyes) is "normal" for me. I guess it makes me a bit sad that the one piece of confidence that I used to have in my appearance, disappeared as the disease really started to settle in.

I guess I can say that my hair is alright too; it's one of the more positive things about my appearance. I had been born with bright blonde hair. For about two or three years, it remained that way: definite blonde. After that, though, it started to get a bit darker by time. Instead of being the bright color it was, it darkened, until it was more approximately, golden. Some days, it seems a bit darker, almost a dirty blond color. However, it never fully darkens out into a definite brown. My hair is thick; it isn’t thick enough to be derange and messy, but just thick enough to reside on more than just the top of my head. It dips a bit across my forehead, and dips a bit more around the sides of my head, not really in a strange looking way, but a unique way. I don't really care that much though; hair is the last thing on my list of priorities.

My nose looks...normal I guess. I mean, to me at least. I don't think it's too big or too small; then again, I don't have the best judgment. My lips aren’t too big and puffy, but they aren’t too small and thin either. My face is a little triangular though--because of OI. My facial bones are underdeveloped because of the disease, so it provides a little bit of abnormality there. Overall, when you put my face together, I guess it almost adds up, if you eliminate all the OI effects. It looks a little unbalanced, but overall, my face looks alright. Though, when your eyes stray away from my face, you can see it doesn't really add up at all. Some people are disgusted by what they see of me; some are pitying.

When you look at the full scale of me, you can see that I’m in a wheel-chair. I’m permanently handicapped because of OI. Most of all, I am very short in stature. Most adults who have the same type of OI as I do, are less then 3'6''. I happened to get lucky enough to be 3'8''. When you look at my arms, you can see how frail they are, along with my legs. I have very little muscle. If you look closely, you can see that there is some definite bone deformation, some in my legs and even a bit in my arms, and definitely in my spine. I have very little to me because of all this. My face doesn’t match with the rest of my body, for it's much too big for my abnormally small stature. I try not to think of my appearance much, though; if I do, I'll be wasting my worries on something that will never change. It's the way I was born.

~~~Personality

Well, I guess this is the hardest part since I can’t just base it all on dry facts. I guess there’s not really much to me, since I haven’t been out in the open much. I’m very dependent on others, because of my OI condition. It’s hard not to be. Though, I dream a lot, of being independent, of not having to annoy people with my needs. I feel a lot of guilt, for being the way I am. I’m persistently told that I shouldn’t feel guilty; I was born this way and there’s nothing I can do about it. Hearing that makes me feel even more guilt: it means I was born to be weaker than everyone else. I feel that if I was in a different condition, I would be the one helping—not the one being helped. It makes me feel bad that I can’t do a lot of the things that others can do.

On the other hand, I push myself too hard. I tell myself that I should be able to do the things that others can do, which only leads to more injury, and more weakness. I try too hard to be normal, to appear stronger than I am, and then I get caught up in the thought. Sometimes I work too hard and to the extreme; few people notice though, since hard work to me is still less than average to the normal human being. The few people who do notice my hard work though—they tell me to calm down, to stop pushing myself. Their words hurt; it just proves the fact that I’m looked down upon, that I have to be watched, monitored. If only I could escape them, if only I could escape myself…then I would be able to do whatever I want. Though, I'm not that brave either. I definitely wouldn't call myself a daredevil, but I can be brave sometimes, when I have a clear purposeful intention. Other times, bravery doesn't come to me.

I spend a lot of time at my window, just watching people. I know that sounds kind of creepy, but for me, it’s the only way to feel alive: to pretend I’m someone else. I watch baseballs fly, runners’ sprinting from base to base. I can't help it; I'm a dreamer. I sit there and watch it from the window in the house, and imagine myself running base to base; I imagine myself as another player in that game, laughing, joking, having fun. It’s an impossible wish, but thinking about it, and imagining it at least passes time. I am very observant of the world around me; I pick up everything I can, and I try to keep myself up to date on whatever I can find.

When I do get the chance to stretch outside the limits and go places by myself, my curiosity definitely kicks into gear. I can’t help myself; I have a raging desire to explore everything and anything I haven’t been exposed to yet. However, I do admit, I also have many fears. I am afraid to speak to people normally; I spend so much time observing them and their reactions, but when it actually comes to talking to them, I shrink down into my own little world of fear. I don’t have enough experience in actually talking to others; therefore, it’s hard for me to do. In fact, sometimes I tend to stutter when I talk to people. I just get so nervous that I’m not sure what to say. I’m more of a thinker than a speaker. I plan out everything in my head, even the words I’ll say to people when I see them; yet, it never comes out in the right way.

I’m very bad at making friends; it’s definitely a weak point. Too many people pity me: they feel sorry for me and then they try to help me. However, very few of them actually try to get to know me. Too many people fear me because they don't really know enough about my perameters. I guess people are just afraid of differences sometimes; I try not to let it get to me.

I guess my view on the Hunger Games is a bit mixed. I mean, I don’t like the Capitol, but I don’t think rebellion is going to do anything to change the way the nation runs. I know that the Capitol probably has some cure for me, but I don’t think about the Capitol much. It's a waste of thought. I mean, even though I do imagine the impossible sometimes, the Capitol coming down is the point of extremity of the word “impossible.” I try not to think about the Hunger Games much, until Reaping Day. Otherwise, I’m wasting my worries on something that has such a small chance of affecting me.


~~~History

I guess it started off when I was born (obviously). I was nothing like my parents, and they saw it from the beginning. My parents were strong, brave, dauntless people; they took the risky path every time. In fact, this left them quite poor. They were both wanderers; past runaways and they spent a lot of time travelling district to district, taking the risk, but staying disguised. They weren’t really sure what they were doing when they had a child; they didn’t mean it. It just happened. However, they were at least hoping to have a strong child: one that could grow up as a wanderer with them, one that could take the risks, and realize how wonderful it was. When I was born, they got what they least expected. They didn’t get a brave, mighty son. Instead, they had me, a troubled boy, a rare outsider. They didn’t really understand me yet, but I was troubling them, and I knew it; in fact, they were starting to regret having a child in the first place. To further stress them, my parents realized, about three years after I was born, that I was abnormally weak. So, they took me to a local doctor in the district and had it checked out.

Turned out, I had brittle bone disease, or Osteogenesis Imperfecta. The doctor couldn’t figure out which type of OI it was: either Type I or Type III, Type III being a bit more severe, but with different specifics. In any case, brittle bone disease was incurable. My parents were stressed out; they knew that caring for me would take effort beyond their control. They never told me about what I had; it was as if they didn’t want me to know. They knew that there would be a price to keeping me. They were young, mindless, and free. They weren’t ready to raise a family yet. So, they wrote a short anonymous letter, wrapped me up while I was sleeping in as many blankets as they could, set me down at the door to the so called orphanage, knocked on the door, and ran away, far away, as fast as they could.

The orphanage was dangerous for me, since I was barely three and a half by that time. There wasn’t much they could do for me there, especially since I still had a bit of trouble walking because of the disease. I had many troubles in the orphanage; I couldn’t do all the things the other children could. The workers there were a bit harsh on me, but for a long time they didn’t know about my disease. I was progressively getting better at walking and doing things other children did, but I had many accidents, over and over and over again. Just little things like bumping in to things, or falling down could fracture a bone. After my first accident, when I was four, I was immediately taken to a doctor, and it healed with time. At least it wasn’t too severe. The doctor saw the disease, and had a long talk with the individuals running the orphanage. He told them I had Type III OI, which mostly meant that as I grew older, even more symptoms would show. From then on, they kept more of an eye on me, and made sure to be easier on me because of it. As I grew older, it seemed as though I was becoming weaker, like the doctor had predicted. I had more accidents as time went by. The workers running the orphanage were clueless when it came to treating me, so I had too many visits with the doctor to count. Soon, I was a point in which walking became hard again.

One day, when I was six, a man of high class, who worked just below the level of mayor, came to visit the orphanage. It was then that I got to meet him, a caring man for what he was. He talked to me for a while, and then, he asked the workers, if he could somehow bring me home, or in other words, give me a better place to say. There were so many forms to sign, but he did it, there and then. I didn't know what inspired him that day.

It soon became evident that I needed a wheelchair in order to move. I couldn’t walk anymore; somehow, the bones in my legs were deforming. So, my adopted father brought me a wheelchair. I felt happy living in his house; I don’t know why he took me in though; I was useless to him. Was it pity that drove him to it?

My adopted father also had a daughter, who was almost a year younger than me, but still in my school grade. Her name was Sadie. She was energetic, fun, and open. She soon acted almost like a personal helper to me, along with a best friend—she would help me get to school and would make sure I was safe. I usually had enough strength to pull myself in wheelchair short distances for a little bit, but longer distances were harder, for the bones in my arms were too weak. While Sadie went out to play with her friends, I usually had to stay inside, for the sake of safety. Yet, I looked forward to seeing Sadie come back and tell me about her day. Most of the time, I was stuck inside, playing by myself, or with Sadie. As I grew older, I grew weaker. As Sadie grew older, she left me alone more often. There were some days, though, when I would be allowed to go and play outside with Sadie, when I got to feel free. Sadie wasn't the kind of person who judged me because of my appearance; she didn't think I was weird because I couldn't walk, or because I was so small. She saw me for who I really was.

Years passed by, and I soon realized, I had no real use in this world, especially in this district. I couldn’t work at all, I couldn’t make a living, and I couldn’t live independently. I reached the age where lots of people were getting jobs in the industry. I felt guilty that I almost couldn’t: that my bones were almost too weak to make clothing. I was sure that if I tried, I could do a little, but not much. I told myself it was okay, because I was under a high-class roof, and my adopted father was happy to provide for me. Though, I couldn’t convince myself. The disease started affecting my hearing too; I felt it drifting away slowly. The doctor had said it was another effect of having not enough collagen. Sadie was my lifeline, but even she was drifting. I wished to be free from it all, from the wheelchair, from the loneliness, from everything. But I told myself I was useless.

Other: Eek, this is my first first-person bio.........it seems really rambly.

Codeword: Odair