azaria richards {ten} finished

My name is Azaria. Mum says it means lost. I'm 9 years old, and I live in District 10. I'm also a girl if you haven't noticed yet, and I'm going to tell you all about myself.

I'm short, but that's not strange, right? I'm only nine. Mum says I'll get really tall one say, but I like my height right now. I don't want to be taller than everyone. I don't tell her that, though, 'cause I'm worried it might upset her. Sometimes, I think she wishes I were taller. Dad tells me to be happy with how I look, so I listen to him. It's hard when your parents tell you different things, and you don't know who to listen to. Mum and Dad disagree a lot, but they still love each other.

Sorry, I'm getting off topic. I tend to do that a lot. Anyway, I have a round face (I guess most people do), and really big eyes. Big, dark brown eyes. People say they make me look innocent, but I don't understand how when I look in the mirror. I think I just look like...well, me. My hair is short, just like my height. It's dark brown with lighter streaks underneath, and almost looks like it's been bleached, but it's just natural. I don't want to grow my hair long. It would get in the way, and it would be a lot harder to brush. I hate brushing my hair. It gets tangled very easily, so I have to brush it a lot, but it hurts to get all the knots out. I usually have Mum do it, because she's really gentle and it never hurts.

Um...what else can I talk about? Maybe my clothes? I just like simple stuff. Jeans, t-shirts, hoodies (if we can afford them), that's about it. My family never had enough money to buy a dress, which means I've never worn one in my whole life. I've seen the escorts wear them at the reapings, and sometimes people in the District can afford it, but I've never actually worn one. I don't want to, anyways. There's no point to them, they just get in the way and make you look spoiled, like everything's been handed to you on a platter.

Okay, I think that's all I can tell you about my appearance...moving on.

I'm a complicated person, let me tell you. I have, um, I'll just call them unique problems. Have you ever seen an elephant walking down the street (I know what they are from picture books)? Or a dog run up to you and then disappear? Or a hole in the middle of your house? Well, you might say I've seen all of these things. Why? It's kind of hard to explain. Mum and Dad say I have something called schizophrenia. I see things that normal people don't see. I hear things that normal people don't see. Sometimes the things are scary, sometimes they're not, but they're never really there. They're called hallucinations. I only have a minor case, I think, because my parents say that most people with schizophrenia have different emotions than I do. I don't know exactly what they mean, but I'm alright with that.

Having schizophrenia also means I don't talk like normal people. The reason I sound normal right now is because Mum has read this over for me almost a hundred times, so it sounds a lot better. I have trouble organizing my thoughts sometimes, and I can't communicate well. Sometimes, I'll say something like, "That one...want. Um...please?" It's not always hard to talk, but sometimes I just say a bunch of words and they don't make any sense at all. Sometimes people will laugh at me, and it hurts. Sometimes they feel pity for me, but I don't like that either. I want to be treated like them, I want to live like they do, but it's not always easy.

Schizophrenia isn't the only unique thing about me. I have something else my parents call dementia. Like schizophrenia, it's just a minor case, so it's not as bad as others, but I know it will get worse. Dementia is something that gets worse the older I get. What is dementia? Well, the name obviously sets a bad tone. It means I'm really forgetful, I get lost easily, and it adds to how difficult it is for me to talk. Sometimes I'll trail off in the middle of a sentence, switch subjects in a second, and forget what I'm talking about. If I met someone yesterday, I probably won't remember their name today. There are days when I've woken up and forgotten where I am, but Mum and Dad remind me, and then everything is okay. There are good days and bad days, and these days are what make up my life. They're what make up me.

Now you know about my unique problems, but you probably want to know more about my personality. I'm very energetic, and I like meeting new people, even if I can't remember their names. I try hard to talk like they do, but it's just so difficult. I like laughing, so I'll laugh and things that are even just a little funny. People think I'm weird, but I don't care. I'm happy they've noticed me, that's all. When someone remembers me or my name, it just makes my world better, because it's so hard for me to remember them and they've taken the time to remember my name, something I can't do. Sometimes I'll forget what I like and what I don't like, and I have to ask Mum or Dad to remind me. They'll smile and tell me what I like, but I know the smile means they're sad. It means they know how forgetful I am. I'll give their hand a squeeze and smile back, or say it's going to be okay, but they can't always be happy like I am.

Well, let me think...I was born in the spring. Dad calls me a spring chicken, and Mum calls me her little sunshine. They say I was born in April, but I can never remember that. My birthday will be coming up, and they'll have to remind me about it because I've forgotten. Anyway, I didn't have any siblings. At first, Mum and Dad were planning to have another baby, but it wasn't working. I think I was a pretty normal baby for the first four years of my life, but I can't remember any of it. They say I learned to walk and eat and everything else just like normal kids do. Sometimes I wish I could go back in time and see what it was like to be normal, to be just like everyone else. But by the time I was four years old, my parents knew there was something wrong with me.

I wasn't learning to talk like normal kids did. I always got words mixed up, and words I had already learned, I couldn't remember. There aren't any doctors in District 10, but we have a small library, and Dad was able to do some research. He looked through a lot of medical books, and he found there was a possibility that I had a mental disease. That was about the time I began hallucinating, when I'd be petting an invisible kitten on my lap, or running from a monster my parents couldn't see. They tell me it was a scary time, because they didn't know exactly what was going on. Because of my speech problems, I couldn't clearly tell them what was happening to me, but I got little bits and pieces out. Things steadily got worse as the year passed, because everyone else was learning new things, and I meanwhile was forgetting everything. The ironic thing is, I remember none of it.

When I was five, my parents decided they didn't want another baby. They tell me they were happy with just me, but I think they were afraid that they might have another one like me, with mental diseases. I never looked at my schizophrenia or dementia as a mental disease. I always thought of it as something special, something that made me different from everyone else. If I didn't have them, I think I would be just like everyone else. Now, if most people were in my shoes, I think they'd want to be like everyone else, and not have anything wrong with them. But I'm different. Schizophrenia and dementia are part of who I am, and without them, I'd be like everyone else, mixing with the crowd and becoming invisible. No, I'm not like any of them. I'm the purple flower in a field of red petals, the cardinal in a flock of blackbirds. I'm the girl that forgets, the girl who's different.