Azima
freezy-rat
- Created
- 8 years, 7 months ago
- Creator
- freezy-rat
- Favorites
- 3
Profile
Azima x
"Everyone around me has changed, but the garden that you planted remains."
Azima is a young college student struggling to make ends in her life. She tends to keep to herself and is very involved in her work, but she will open up to people she completely trusts. To strangers she may seem cold or even rude in some instances, but she's just not comfortable around others until she gets to know them. Azima likes to spend her time exercising or working with the plants she keeps in her apartment. Whenever she has a day to spare she's out on woodland trails either hiking or biking.
Personality
- Reserved
- Self-aware
- Distant
- Defeatist
- Hard worker
- Cautious
A lot of Azima's personality can be drawn from her first impressions on others. Ever since she was young, she was never one to talk a lot, keeping quiet unless she needed to say something. In that she also became a little withdrawn, keeping more to herself and avoiding the discomfort of interacting with others that have more boisterous personalities. She's isolated both mentally and physically, uncomfortable with opening up to others unless she completely knows them and avoiding physical contact with everyone except for close friends and family. However, those she calls her friends share a very deep connection with her. She confides in her closest companions and loves to spend time with them, even if after a few hours she reaches her limit. Something that effect's Azima's actions and reactions on a very deep level is her clinical depression. Her mental illness contributes to her lethargy and desire to be alone for prolonged periods of time, and she's prone to falling into downward spirals if things in her life start to go wrong. Something she's noticed with her depression is that it grows worse in the winter, which can be difficult to deal with. Azima intentionally picked a job requiring lower hours in the wintertime to help her cope with her lower motivation levels. She does light therapy in the colder months, but it only helps her so much. The reason she began to exercise more often was another method of coping with her year round depression, which does help her stay on track. It gives her a healthy way to spend her time and energy and gets her blood flowing again.
Background
Azima was given up for adoption by her biological mother at birth. She doesn't know why. It isn't a question that ever plagued her mind, but at times she does wonder who her biological mother was and what she was like. When she was still very young she was adopted by her two current mothers: a pit bull named Lori and and English Springer Spaniel named Janice. They were the most loving parents Azima ever could have hoped for. She knew she was adopted from the beginning, and never questioned the validity or sanctity of her mothers' marriage. They were her moms and she loved them, and that was all that mattered. In her earlier years of schooling she did receive a little backlash from classmates about her two moms, but Azima was never one to be ashamed of her family, and wouldn't hesitate to fight back. This resulted in several detentions during elementary school for some minor fights.
It was also discovered very early on that Azima had more difficulty grasping more technical concepts than her classmates. She was quickly put into a special mathematics program for students who had trouble with the subject. Azima's moms were still incredibly supportive, and it was because of their positivity that Azima never learned to be ashamed of her learning speed. She was comfortable admitting how bad she was at math and science, but this also gave way to an early defeatist attitude, allowing others to take over for her in group activities and instilling the idea that studying didn't matter, since she would perform poorly regardless.
Into middle and high school Azima quite naturally became more self conscious about her intelligence. She was always a class behind her peers. sitting in with younger classes and still struggling. She didn't have any close friends, so no one ever really questioned which class she was in or noticed when she didn't have the same workbooks as they did. Azima was generally known by everyone and passed off as a quiet kid, so she kept to herself. She didn't do a lot of extracurriculars because of her frequent after school tutoring sessions, which made making friends that much more difficult. She got to a point in her life where everyone she knew was either an adult or someone at least several years younger than she was.
By the time she graduated, Azima was ready for high school to be over. She still didn't know what she wanted to do, and decided to head off to community college to get her associate's degree. She moved into a low rent apartment close to the campus and started the next step into her life. She took a few different classes to explore her interests, but nothing offered ever really caught her eye. It was in her first year that she met Prince, who happened to cross paths with her during a tornado warning outside of her building. She let him inside to wait for the warning to pass, and during that time they became friends. One of the more major events in Azima's community college years was meeting Orville. Orville worked at a state park that Azima would frequent to go biking, and they eventually became friends. As an adult with a degree, Orville was able to offer Azima guidance on choosing the right path for her. Under his suggestion and guidance she decided to pursue a career in Environmental Studies.
After three years of community college, Orville managed to convince Azima to transfer to the private university Prince attended so that she could get a proper education. She was very reluctant, but with support from her parents, mentor, and best friend she caved and enrolled for classes in the fall. She was introduced to an Entomology major at her school who was interning with Orville named Keilah. Keilah took it upon herself to help guide Azima through the Environmental Studies program, but it became apparent very quickly that this would be much easier said than done. Halfway through the first semester, Azima began to stumble. She had to drop out of Bio 150, scrapping both the class and the corresponding lab. She visited with her advisor, looking for a way to earn her degree without the class, but was disappointed to find there was no other option. In her second semester she was optimistic, but quickly fell into a heavy depressive episode. After midterms she completely stopped going to class and didn't earn a single credit. Under the encouragement of Prince she decided to take the next semester off to think about what she truly wanted.
Character Summary
I first created Azima back in 2012 during my 8th grade year. She was the first character I ever created with the intent of developing a realistic and well rounded character, and my first character that ever experienced realistic struggles. I created her as a college freshman who didn't know what she wanted to do with her life, much like me at the time, with the pressures of deciding about college being introduced to me even at a young age. She was my way of coping with the fear of getting older and being on my own. Azima was also how I discovered and understood my depression- one of the first traits I established about her was her major depressive disorder. She helped me to realize what I was going through, and through her I've been able to share the burden of my depression with someone who understood. She is still currently one of the most- if not the most- important characters in my heart. She and I share struggles and with her help I've been able to make some hard decisions and live through some tough patches of my life.
Trivia
- Biking is her primary form of transportation- for incredibly long distances she takes public transport, but will often still combine this with cycling between stops
- It takes a lot for Azima to consider someone a friend, and the only person she has ever referred to as a 'best friend' is Prince
- Often comes off as rude because of her quiet demeanor and low tolerance for social interaction
- Has a very deep relationships with her moms, who she calls Mama Lo and Mama Jan
- Doesn't listen to music- if she needs background noise she will play a podcast
Relationships
References
