Matthew Hale

Matthew Hale, the younger of two siblings, is a 23 year old aspiring photographer. Born on June 23rd, 1999, he’s 6’1 and around 155 lbs.

Known family is his sister - April Vivian Scott, his mother - Theresa Ann Hale, and his father, the late Andrew John Hale.

Lanky and lithe, Matthew is constantly thinking about putting on more muscle. Though fairly pale at times due to a matter of afflictions, his face has a rather rosy complexion and the lack of facial hair makes for a clear visage. Not counting for occasional outbreaks from lack of care caused by lapses in his mental health or plain laziness.
His hair is composed of messy, unkempt, and wavy dark brown locks - the back of his hair reaching the nape of his neck while his bangs brush up against his eyebrows. The leftmost side of his hair is slightly flatter than the rest of it, this on account of the eyepatch he habitually wears over his left eye. The eye was unfortunately lost during an accident when Matthew was 17, multitudes of issues with peripheral vision, overall vision, depth perception, and the like. However, his remaining eye is a cool hazel shade, occasionally seen half lidded due to lack of sleep.
His face is quite angular in general, Matthew boasting a defined jawline and smooth skin; however, the bags under his eyes can make him look straight up goulish after an especially restless night.

His style isn’t exactly unique, mainly composed of whatever graphic t-shirts he’s found at a thrift shop accompanied by his choice of layering. This usually being either a black windbreaker, an acid washed denim jacket, an unzipped hoodie, or just the plain shirt itself. His avoidance of wearing shorts is most obvious during the summer months, this being when Matthew is most adamant about wearing jeans and an occasional pair of capris. Very rarely will he be seen in shorts, but it isn’t impossible.

Matthew’s height makes his horrid posture apparent, his slight hunch being amplified because of how easy he is to spot. He is constantly seen yawning, brushing his hair away from his good eye, adjusting whatever piece of clothing he may be focusing on, or impulsively checking his phone in order to avoid anyone’s suspicion.

Matthew isn’t the most warm person, but he isn’t exactly rude either. He tries his best to just avoid others who he doesn’t have to actively be around. It’s an almost unmanageable balance on the line between solitary and antisocial. Though he never actively seeks people out, he won’t actively push away those who try and get close to him. They just have to get through some initial snarkiness and attitude, a perpetual bad mood caused by the aforementioned insomnia as well as surprise that they’re attempting to socialize with him in the first place.
Past events left Matthew with a broken ego and self worth, years of therapy and self help working to rebuild what was shattered. So far, he’s been doing well and has had the confidence to come out of his shell on several occasions. Unfortunately, he still struggles with trust issues and commitment, so if one wants him to follow through on something, it will take a lot of checking in and encouragement. Deep down, he craves connection - he craves the support and warmth of others. It is just hard for him to ask for it.
When he is finally with friends though, he tends to avoid parties and overall gift exchanges. An upbringing in poverty turned into a comfortable middle class, he was still left with a soft scarcity mentality which plagues him to this day. Matthew gets almost nauseous when he is asked to participate in Secret Santa, or when he has to turn down an offer to a dear friend’s birthday party. The idea of spending his own money, or others spending their hard earned money, on an expensive gift gives him hives. Resources were limited in his childhood, and he learned to avoid asking for anything as a response to never having been gifted even a Transformers figure as a kid. However, if it is to eat, Matthew will be more lenient, especially if a friend has no money on them for it.

Despite the options being provided to him, Matthew has never opted for a glass eye. Eventually, his mother paid for a prosthesis out of her own pocket, much to his dismay. He never understood why the avoidance of a hollowed eye socket was such an issue to her, but the circumstances around his injury left her with as much guilt as his father had. Therefore, she paid for it in order to preserve the tissue around it and overall keep a more natural aesthetic about him; nevertheless, he still wears an eyepatch. It’s just that now he has to take out the eye and clean it as needed. The maintenance makes him feel quite squeamish.

His romantic relationships have been put on a halt for a while because of the events that rendered him a shell of his former self for a while. Now that he’s recovering well, it still hasn’t been the top thing on his mind. He is a bisexual, having figured that out before any of it went down, but he has practically no experience in that regard. His methods of doing things, general social anxieties, and other factors make it hard for him to even get close to that level of intimacy with anyone.

He enjoys photography a lot, the depth and focus being up mainly to the camera. This has led to him actually spending money on his hobby, gradually and recently, but it’s still an improvement. Nowadays, he has a few high end cameras and a collection of lenses, filters, and overall equipment. He has thought about a career in photography a few times, but he’s decided to put that on hold until he gets better at it. Matthew isn’t horrible with it at all, just quite hard on himself.
Some other likes include classical and synth heavy music respectively, an unreasonable love for strawberries, and a hyperfixation on his dreams of moving to a bigger city. He will never admit it, but he does harbor a slight admiration to architects and general architecture in cities like New York City and Chicago.