- - - - - - p e r s o n a l i t y » the lion's roar - - - - - -

Neck, chest, waist to floor,
Easy to take, you could take me in fours.
Make me a deal, a day a piece,
Take it all, just stay a week,
I can't let it out, I still let you in.

I am bittersweet - exactly how the word sounds. Bitter, then sweet. I am temperamental and cold, but I eventually warm up to people. Not enough to get close, of course, because everyone leaves me, in the end, but it's not to say that I can't be nice. I can be. It's just that I choose not to bother even making the effort for fear of being hurt. Bittersweet doesn't really make sense, if you think about it. It contradicts itself. But I guess that I don't make sense either, so it's perfect.

Quiet, shy and reclusive around strangers, I'm a bit more light-hearted around my friends. It's as if someone has flicked a switch inside of me when familiar company wanders by. I guess it's easier for me to open up a little, because I'm more comfortable around people I know. Gradually, as my friends accepted my little addition to their group - I let myself be my own person. I'm not really sure who that is, but I'm trying my best. For so long I let the 'unwanted' label hang over me that it defined who I was. I was the orphan, the forgotten, the thing that no-one wanted. Now I'm discovering that I'm not just that - I can be more. I am more. I can be whoever I want to be, whoever I am supposed to be. I am fierce and independent and broken and strong. I like to laugh and make others laugh too. I am good at maths and tip-toeing through my life and I am building myself up brick by brick. I count my positives one by one to try and balance out the flaws that I convinced myself were who I was for all of my sixteen years. I'm still trying to figure myself out - and often there are parts of me that I have to take down and start over with, but I'm getting there. It's just gonna take time.

And you can tell everybody
that this is
your song

The thing about being abandoned all your life is you grow longing to be accepted. You don't trust anyone, and you always expect people to leave. You have to learn to fend for yourself at a very young age. In a way, I guess I'm a bit more mature than most. Or just realistic. There's never been room for fairy-tales in my life. I've always been one for the sadistic stories where the main characters die and you are left with a deep aching to re-write the ending yourself. I wish that I could re-write my life into my perfect version, but I can't. I guess I'm glad, in a morbid way, that all this has happened to me. It's shaped me into someone who see's things from a different perspective - and although it might not be the brightest view, it's one in itself.

Whilst I'm either easy-going or a little quiet on my not-so-good days, I have a temper if you anger me. I've learned that it is so easy for people to judge you, and even easier to let their comments get to you - but I've been through too much to let words affect me. Words are nothing but cowards' weapons that cannot leave a mark on me. You'd be surprised at how different I'll become - as if the switch in me has a third setting that comes out to play every once in a while. I am not afraid to speak my mind and I'll shut down your snarky little comments faster that you can utter the word sorry. I know that I should not hold grudges against people, as I'm a hypocrite for saying so, but hey. I might be selfish for saying it, but I think I've earned enough to keep a grudge or two.

It's a pool of boiling wax,
I'm getting in.
Let it set, got to seal this in.
Can't adjust, can't relearn.
Got to keep what I have, preserve

- - - - - - h i s t o r y » way too young to be broken - - - - - -

I was three hours old when my parents abandoned me. Three hours. Three. They disappeared into thin air, leaving everyone and everything behind yet vanishing with everything that they were, everything that left a trace or clue that they existed. They even left their baby daughter behind with no more than a shawl to keep me warm. They slipped away so silently that I do not even know their first names. No-one does. I was found on a doorstep sixteen years ago in the early hours of the morning. The people who discovered me said that I smelled of roses, the ground around my basket was covered in moss and then named me Charla Rose. I cried and screamed and wailed so loudly that I woke up the entire street. I like to think that I was calling for my parents to come back. All that I was left with was the tale of two adults who fled from Three and a note saying Look after her. No-one knows who my parents were, what they looked like, what became of them. They may have been caught by Peacekeepers moments after they ran, shot in the head right on the spot - or maybe they're still out there. Running. Chasing far-fetched dreams. Why they left me, I have no idea. I've never been able to get my head around someone leaving their child to a stranger, unwanted, uncared for. When I was a little girl, I'd dream about what they looked like. What they did for a living, what they smelled like, how they'd tuck me up in bed every evening and kiss me goodnight. Reality hit me when I was ten years old and I realised that they weren't coming to whisk me away. They made me bitter and they made me strong and in my most unplatable moods I sometimes wish that they really were shot in the head that night.

I went from home to home from then on. There were no orphanages in District Three then, because everyone had a home to go to, somewhere they were wanted. Everyone except me. It was a new home or the street, so I stayed quiet. I was the unwanted little girl who's only possessions were carried around in a plastic bag as she was dumped on doorstep to doorstep, bell-ringing and rapping of doors instead of hugs and comfort and love. This is only temporary, I made myself believe. This too shall pass. I don't know how I kept hold of that hope for so damn long.

I was an extra bag to carry, an extra mouth to feed, an extra load on someone, anyone, everyone's shoulders. With each new family a new spark of hope was ignited inside of me, put out as quickly as it appeared. The moment I tip-toed into their houses I knew that they didn't really want me. Not really. I was just another hassle that no-one needed. Maybe they felt sorry for me, the little orphan girl - but they had a funny way of showing it. Putting their own kids over me, or if they had none, ignoring me for hours on end. Some didn't even bother to learn my name. Gradually I learnt not to even bother unpacking my plastic-bag world - it wouldn't be soon before long that I had to pack it all up again.

When I was ten years old, I ended up at Aunt Emma's house. She wasn't really my Aunt - but when I asked her what to call her, she'd replied with a smile and gave me her answer. I wanted to please, please, please be the best-behaved little girl I could ever be so they wouldn't throw me out again and again and again along with the trash. Aunt Emma was a little kooky, with her wild hairstyles and multi-coloured walls, patterns tracing the plaster like the veins in my arms - but I stayed my quiet self and did as I was told. She fussed over me and made sure I always looked nice, tucking me in a little too tightly for my liking at night and bringing me cup of fruity-tasting tea in the mornings, but for the first time in my life I thought that perhaps, this was what being loved was like. I was overjoyed, ecstatic, the empty plastic bag leaving the house instead of me - it's items stored away in delicate wooden drawers next to my very own bed. I was finally falling into a system of synchronisation. Normality. It was foreign to me, but I'd searched for it for so long that my parents did not cross my mind for a long time.

And then it changed. Again. Because with me, nothing lasts.

A new little girl came. Her name was Polli. She was a few years younger than me - seven, to be exact - and Aunt Emma fussed over her just like she did with me. I tried to be good, I tried, I tried, I tried; but I might as well have been invisible. She grew bored of me, shoved me on the side. Devastated, I proceeded back into my old routine. Stayed silent. Tip-toed around my room as if I was walking on thin, cracking slithers of ice. Scrubbed myself clean, clean, clean so I could be perfect. Terrified that f I put a mere hair out of line, Aunt Emma might send me right back to where I came from. I was a tiny little dolled-up girl placed on the shelf to collect dust - a new child to fuss over taking my place.

I held my breath for the next couple of months. Did as I was told. Didn't dare to even try and weasel my way back into the place of favourite little girl. Invisible, I had a home. I had a roof over my head and a bed to sleep in at night, and a family. Sort of. I barely talked to Polli, but then again, I barely talked to anyone. I grappled desperately with myself, spending hours sitting silently in my room whilst the other little girl laughed with Aunt Emma. Furious, I became jealous - until the same thing happened to Polli. It became clear that Aunt Emma liked to hoard children, as if we were collectable figurines, and when she became bored of us, simply got herself a new thing to play with. Polli slid into the forgotten category, and together we counted the days we slipped through quietly like the stars in the night sky. We never grew close, Polli and I, but there was a mutual respect between us both as Polli began to realise we would never be picked up again. I myself had realised that long ago.

"Charla?" a tiny voice whispered through the bed covers, so quiet it could have been carried away with the sounds of crickets.

"Yes?" the eleven year old replied, blinking through the darkness of the night in the bedroom the two girls shared.

"She's not gonna love us again, is she?"

Charla wanted to lie. They could both hear her, reading a story to the new little girl as she fell asleep - the other two girls hidden away under a castle of blankets and pillows in the midnight air. If her own dreams were crushed, then perhaps she could lead Polli into believing that she still had some hope.

Hope. Funny word, hope. Charla never had any to begin with. The moment she stepped into a house, she knew she'd be leaving it again.

Maybe it wouldn't be the same for Polli. Maybe she'd stay.

For once in her life, maybe someone she'd grown to care for wouldn't leave her.

Charla couldn't lie to her. She shouldn't. She wouldn't.

"Yes, Polli. She'll still love you."

She wouldn't steal away Polli's hope from her. Not yet.

After a while, more children came and went. Most were just foster kids - kids with parents that just couldn't handle them. Or didn't want to. Either way, everyone had a home to go back to somewhere. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. I counted the children that joined me on the forgotten shelf with all of my fingertips. For some reason, by the time I was fifteen, I was the only child that had stayed since she entered. Even Polli left, a few weeks after our late-night discussion - but she faded from my mind after a while. It's best not to bring her up, when I'm around. After that, I never became friends with any of the other kids that lived here. I counted my lucky stars, because counting was the only thing I was ever good at. Count the days, count the stars, count my fingers, count the children. Count houses and petals on a flower and tiles on the pavement. Count the kids that were sent off to the Games and never returned home. In a way, the children in Emma Moss's house were like the names pulled out of the barrel. I was the Victor that managed to survive. Perhaps it was because I had no where else to go, or I'd been there for the longest, or Aunt Emma felt bad for me. The beginning of her collection, the starting piece. Either way, I was lucky not to be on the street; so I did my chores and went to bed on time and slipped through the house like a breeze in the walls.

I went to school for a bit, but most of the time I just sat at the back and said nothing. I found I was exceptionally good at mathematics - perhaps because I'd been counting for all those years. The numbers clicked in my head, sums and equations placing themselves in my mind to solve in a heartbeat. I had a hard time making friends, not knowing how - but it got easier as I grew older. I gradually became accustomed to people, whispering a good morning if they greeted me with a little nod of my head. Then I would tag along with the groups of teenagers, hanging around the back of the school or lying against the grassy banks counting the clouds as they drifted past. I was a drifter myself, unsure of where I belonged - but the more I socialised, the easier it became for me to adjust. I found that I could enjoy being around others. That if I was not accepted at home, at least I could be accepted with my friends. I was quiet but thoughtful, and if anyone tried to pick on me, they soon learned that I was a force to be reckoned with. Years of abandonment and not knowing who I was or where I belonged made me tough. No longer was I a little doll made of porcelain - I was a machine like the ones they made in the factories of Three; crafted and electrified and unbreakable. I was made of steel and nothing could hurt me.

Reapings came and went. My name was one of thousands. Thankfully, it was never pulled out. And neither was Polli's. You hear heroic tales of people volunteering for their siblings - and perhaps, one day, I'd be able to do that, too. For Polli, perhaps. Because she's the closest thing I ever had to family, and I never even knew her last name. Hell, I do not even know where she ended up after Aunt Emma's. The hell in the arena is far worse than the hell I endured through my time, but perhaps I could make it. I spent my childhood on the teetering balance of with home and without, but I managed to slip through. I survived. For as long as I could - and I'd do so in the Games. Not win, of course - come on, now. I'm a realist, not an optimist. But if I could use my last few days fighting for my life so Polli could live another year, then by all means, let the Games begin.

Look after her, they asked. Because they couldn't do it themselves. Or they didn't want to. Maybe if my face was displayed to the world of Panem, to the thousands upon thousands - somewhere in that crowd they'd recognise me. Would they know if it was me? Their daughter they left on her own whilst they took off? Would they even be alive to hear me whisper my dying words of forgiveness hatred toward them? Either way, they're the scum of the earth and please come home, please come back. I miss you I need you I love you I'd love the prissy Capitol filth a thousand times over before I'd ever love them. I was unwanted from the day I was born and will be until the day I die.