RSS04 - The Alatha Problem
Alatha has always been tricky to write for.
One of the prime reasons for this is likely the fact that I originally based her off a friend (I’ll call her Alatha for simplicity’s sake) that I have had literally no contact with in over two years, and no really meaningful contact with for even longer than that.
See, the current SpaceTime draft evolved from the story I’d developed on Gaia Online back in the day. At the risk of sounding like a bitter old man, that site was a lot less commercialized back in the day. But anyway.
“Alatha” and I had been online friends for several years, and we had met for the first time on a road trip I had taken back in 2004. (This was the same trip where I met Kess, the girl I eventually married. But I’m getting ahead of myself.)
Over the course of the next year, I found myself torn between Alatha and Kess. They had both expressed interest in furthering a relationship, and not wanting to cause hurt feelings, I wound up with a near-textbook case of Betty and Veronica Syndrome.
In hindsight, I do wonder if Alatha had ever really intended to go anywhere with the relationship I had with her. We’d talk on the phone occasionally, but never for very long. Kess, on the other hand, inadvertently wound up with a $500 dollar phone bill one month shortly after I started talking to her on a regular basis, because we’d talk for hours.
It probably didn’t help that when I initially tried to choose between them, I’d laid awake all night deliberating and made a decision on little to no sleep, effectively pressuring Alatha into giving me a yes or no answer that we both later regretted.
Over the next couple of years, while I was getting married to Kess and settling into married life, my friendship with Alatha slowly dissolved. She’s cut off almost every avenue of communication we used to have, and I haven’t questioned it; after all, it’s her decision and I respect her privacy. Still, when you’ve lived through a childhood like mine, where almost every friendship you made was fleeting because you were uprooted every couple of years, it’s a hard thing to realize that you’ve lost a friend due to something else.
So this is why I have a hard time writing Alatha, the SpaceTime character; she was originally based on the real-life “Alatha,” who’s supposed to be Carda’s ex-girlfriend. Maybe that’s too close to reality for me to be able to write it effectively, I don’t know. I still think of Alatha as a friend, even if she’s written me off.
I’ve already lost so many friends to time and circumstance. I’d hate to lose another.
At least, that’s how I operate.
