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Who are they?

Characters.

By Aura DomingosPublished 2 years ago 7 min read
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Who are they?
Photo by Ryoji Iwata on Unsplash

Sarah: I am Sarah, and this narrative will not tell my stories. Instead, I will narrate my friends' stories, mistakes, strengths, and weaknesses as pieces of who I am. I think this third-person writing approach will be more attractive to the reader.

So, I will narrate the stories of people like you and me. But, dear reader, I must warn you that I will expose these characters' vulnerabilities.

I believe in the premise that your friends are part of who you are. That is why I decided to speak about them. First, however, I feel that I should tell you a bit about myself. I am an ordinary person. I belong to a group of people who never thought or tried to change society's conventions. I have questioned society's standards countless times, but I have not actively tried to change any of its patterns.

Since I was a child, I have had this fascination for biographies. Then, when I was ten years, I read Galileo Galilei's biography. How fantastic is imagining what this astronomer, mathematician, and physicist has gone through to prove that the planet Earth had, in fact, a circular shape? I remember reading about how Galileo had invented a superior telescope after hearing about this amazing discovery in Holland soil.

His brave support of Copernican theory about the Sun led religious authorities to condemn him to heresy. In sum, that is the life of someone who took risks to change the status quo.

Yet, these inspiring stories have always played an essential role in my life, inspiring me to think in human terms. I studied psychology and philosophy because of this tendency to see things through humanistic lenses.

Furthermore, you are going to read about my inner circle of friends. If there is a gist for this set of narratives, it would be a person's inner circle of friends and how these friends impact an individual's life through the years and life occurrences. In my story, my friends are the main characters, not me.

Dear reader, you might be wondering why I decided to follow this path. I may say that I cannot answer this question yet. Also, I would like to warn you that I will talk about myself in the third person. It may give these stories a sense of detachment and closeness at the same time. Moreover, it may contribute to the narrative progress.

Bruno: Bruno was born in a Vermont's conservative high middle-class family. He always respected his family's lifestyle and choices but always thought that his life decisions might not correspond to his family's expectations and interpretation of life occurrences. Physically, Bruno is beautiful, has long hair and sound body composition. He has magnetic eyes; it is like he is pretending not to see people; however, you could notice he was often watching them, their gestures, and trying to capture their souls and genuine intentions.

He likes to say that his young self was more adventurous. He describes himself as a guy who feels lost and seeks variety and fun moments to compensate for these hard feelings. As a result, he lives with the sensation of finding his authentic self while losing himself. For this reason, the adventurous spirit of seeing and experiencing life so profoundly resonates with his social, intimate, professional persona and lifestyle.

Besides his profound nature and sincere desire to be and do better, Bruno knew he had moments of absolute superficiality. He loves aesthetics and beauty. And even though he has a refined taste for Arts, he feels that he could be a little too focused on the externalities of people, living things, and objects around him.

Carl: Carl is a mysterious guy. As a typical introvert, he prefers to stay for extended periods by himself. Also, his friends and acquaintances knew him as an avid reader and a computer geek. He was the most scared person Sarah had ever met. Another significant detail about him - he is a convicted vegan. Carl has a very romantic and idealistic aura. Because of his work, he was a detective and a government special security agent. He knew many people but had a few close friends.

Sarah noticed that Carl often would hide his emotions. For example, when he was dating a girl much younger than him, Sarah thought that maybe her friend was again finding a way to control and hide his deepest emotions. Sarah had an intuition that he was still in love with Leticia.

Joaquim: He is an extroverted guy. He is athletic, the type of person who goes to the gym every day. Joaquim was fun and very funny. He enjoyed entertaining people. Besides his beautiful and healthy physical appearance, Joaquim was a knowledgeable man. He worked as a social worker and was an environmentalist. Joaquim always brought the difficult conversation among Sarah's friends and reminded them about social issues, world inequalities, climate change, and global warming. He considered himself a fortunate person, and good things were always happening for him. She remembered the day they went to a coworker's birthday party, and the host gifted Joaquim with hand-made candies prepared by a French chef famous for being a fine sweets master. She heard that Joaquim had helped the host to get a hospital vacancy for his daughter, who had cancer. Joaquim had such a good heart. And the candies were delicious, the best sweets that she had ever tasted. Joaquim was respected, and many people adored him. Sarah enjoyed being among his inner circle of best friends.

Mark: Mark is a traveler. His conversations with Sarah and his inner circle of best friends often happened online. He works as a writer, and after publishing a book telling his travel experiences around the world, he became a famous author. He is not a religious man, but he is very spiritual and likes to go to the Catholic Church and the Synagogue on special occasions.

Mark enjoys telling his friends how he isn't sure about divinity and spirituality, but he knows certain things in life go beyond our sense of reality and limited perspectives.

He was a realistic guy who had gone through many relationships and had been hurt. Thus, he always expressed his frustration with trusting people who abused him.

In his last relationship, he fell in love with a woman who worked as his secretary for a while, and then she stole a large amount of money while taking care of his banking accounts. In addition, the woman was sending large amounts of cash overseas illegally.

Sarah thought that Mark might be waiting and searching for an unexpected type of love that would erase his past pains and surprise him with joy and hope. Yet, she felt that Mark was tired of being the realist and reasonable guy in the group; he might have reached that level where reality culminates in dreams, as we see in the Yin - Yang symbol. In other words, every dreamer may be a realist, and every realist might be a dreamer.

Leticia: Leticia is Sarah's best friend, like an older sister. Leticia's family is wealthy. They have a good business selling maple syrup in Austin, Texas. Since she was a child, she decided to be a Marine. Her parents were always very busy, but they would do their best to actively participate in their daughter's life. So, Leticia went to Military school when she was only 14 years old. Her father had many friends in the Military, and it was easy for him to get Leticia into the best Military school in Texas. Leticia and Sarah have been friends since college. They talk about everything from science to celebrities, and they have a lot of fun together. They were considered the weird girls in college, despised by some but loved by many colleagues and professors who admired their sense of determination and creativity. So, when Sarah was in love with that super cute guy, Leticia was there to help her go through this first rejection. Sarah was fine, totally healed of this temporary heartbreak in a few weeks. Leticia also faced some heartbreaks while in college. She loved a Sociology Professor, who was gorgeous and used to introduce himself as divorced; however, later, she discovered that he was married.

On one of these emotional roller coasters, they met Carl, who was that friend who makes everything so simple and unique. Carl is like an angel. Carl is also a women's ally. As a feminist man, he was always so concerned about Sarah and Leticia's physical integrity when they got drunk in the countless parties they went together while studying in college. Carl is an empathetic man who values women's differences and believes that society should treat women better. Leticia is grateful and considers herself lucky for having Sarah and Carl as best friends.

relationships
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About the Creator

Aura Domingos

I am a language teacher who suddenly fell in love with writing stories. These stories combine facts with large doses of fiction, as described in the fantastic realism.

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