I don’t indulge much in relationships outside of my writing. Somehow, it’s easier for me to figure out how people relate to each other when they’re fictional. I guess it has a lot to do with the fact that I have control over those relationships, I can chose how those people meet and get to know each other. Real life is a lot less simple and rarely ever in my control.
I can think about a person’s significance in another’s life when I know there’s a set story to follow. Putting two characters into a specific environment and deciding on how they connect to it and each other comes in the larger scheme of things. With my personal life, I never know how it’s going to play out. I’m not sure if it is ever better for me to share something with another person or what will go wrong if I keep my mouth shut. It’s that uncertainty that keeps me from looking too far into actual human relationships.
Despite that, I can easily describe my relationship with certain things or ideas. I know that I’m fond of certain things and can’t stand the sight of others, and that I connect very strongly to certain perspectives on societal issues. But take that and apply it to another living, breathing person, and I’ll be too lost to function.
I’m not very good with people or the development of relationships. Most of the time it seems like both those things occur in my life by accident, while I’m kind of just dragged along for the ride. It works fine if I take myself out of the equation and throw a few characters in, make a story out of it. Then, I’m suddenly an expert in the realm of feelings and relationships and I can build them all up out of nothing. I suppose it all depends on the medium through which it happens. Real life, not so much. On paper, it’s almost perfect.
-Ruvi Gonzalez, Junior Fiction Editor