laura harrier & she / her / cis woman ‷ watch out , BARBARA “BARBIE” EDWARDS has crash-landed into roswell !! they look thirty years old and celebrate their birthday on january 1st . they are from vancouver, british columbia, reside in lunar crescent and are currently working as an event planner. one thing you should know about them is she has an associates’s degree in dental hygiene and a bachelor’s degree in hospitality management. ‷ ( olivia, she / her, twenty-two, cst )
hi it’s olivia🧍♀️ lets just jump in shall we
BACKGROUND:
born in miami, florida to two... trying parents.
in no way was barbara planned. in actuality, barbara’s conception was meant to be no more than one last hurrah before her father was left salt lake city, utah to fort hood in killeen, texas to join the military base
however, two and a half months later, sergeant jeffrey edwards receives a letter from the one and only elizabeth washington saying she’s pregnant and it has to be his
trying to do things the traditional way, the two find a way to get elizabeth to killeen and situated. around elizabeth’s four month mark, elizabeth and jeffrey decide to elope, tethering themselves together forever.
it’s around six and half months that the edwards’ are told they’re being relocated to florida.
barbara isn’t due until mid january, but decides she wants to spend new years with her parents. she’s born on january 1, 1991 to a twenty-four year old jeffrey and a twenty-five year old elizabeth.
she spends the first year of her life in florida, but it’s at age one the edwards’ are told to move to seattle, and age three they’re told to move to washington d.c.
stability had never been a word barbara was all too familiar with, seeing how she never lived in the same town for longer than two years at a time up until the age of eighteen
despite attending numerous public schools both on and off bases, barbara had to really rely on herself if she wanted to retain any information. jumping from schools in the middle of the year always left her at a loss. either she was joining a new school ahead or behind where everyone else was.
neither of her parents were educated past the secondary level, but her mom tried to help her whenever she had time
luckily, the books and work she did seemed to be a constant in her life, which motivated her to do the work on her own. while the content of the work may have been inconsistent based on relocations, the expectation remained the same.
if she can’t control anything going on around her, she can control her own person. her grades were always good, and she always took really good care of herself. as she entered her pre-teen / teen years, she began reading different fashion magazines to figure out what to do with her hair, skin, and makeup. something she’s always had, though, is an incredible care for her teeth. it’s at age thirteen she decides she wants to go into dentistry when she gets older.
when she’s fifteen years old, jeffrey edwards is discharged from his military services. after living on bases all around the country, he decides he wants to settle down in vancouver, bc.
living in vancouver from ages fifteen to eighteen meant she was going to have a new record for place she’s lived the longest.
it’s not until things have really settled that barbara notices her parents don’t seem to have the connection she thought they did. with the chaos of moving all the time with two parents working, it was never apparent to barbara that they might not be a good match.
things are tense, and she hears harsh whispers across the hall when her parents believe she’s asleep.
still, they refuse to divorce. barbara is almost out of the house, then they can be free to live life as they wish. after giving her years of instability, the last thing they want to do is spring yet another new life change on her. sometimes she wishes they had.
to get away from it all and back to what she’s familiar with, barbara looks for a school in the states where she can get a degree in dental hygiene.
at age eighteen she moves to sacramento, california to attend carrington college. the program promises licensure in less than two years, and the sooner barbara can get herself to a normal life, the better.
when she’s twenty and unfortunately after some mishaps with fiscal services and payments, barbara is halfway through her program. just one more year and she’s done. and that’s when she meets alejandro ballesteros. she’s never been in one place long enough to really care to meet anyone, so alejandro is both nerve-wracking and exciting.
alejandro is good to her. in fact, she’s never felt more COMFORTABLE in her life. with his love and support, the last year of the program is a breeze and she passes her licensing exams with flying colors.
she’s twenty-three and a year into her new job when she messes things up ROYALLY. carmen ballesteros is now engaged, and barbara begins to think. she begins thinking of her parents timeline versus where her and alejandro were. they were almost the age her parents were when they had her. her parents never had the heart to tell her the truth about her conception, and although she knows their relationship is not good, she has no one else to look up to. she didn’t meet many friends parents growing up, and her parents would talk to more people on each base than she could keep up with.
for the first time in her life, barbara is not fully in control of herself. sure, for the most part, everything is her choice. but wanting to be married was a decision they both had to make, and it didn’t seem like alejandro was going to budge. before she knows it, she’s pushed too hard and he’s moving his things out.
not long after that, her parents finally decide to pull the plug on their own marriage as well. a cherry on top of the shit cake life had seemed to hand her.
with everything she knows crashing down around her, she feels herself spiraling. being a dental hygienist is not nearly as fulfilling as barbara had planned for it to be, but the gig did come with some pretty decent benefits.
it’s the only way she can afford therapy. while she desperately needs multiple years to unpack everything she needs to deal with, it only takes a year for her to decide she needs to find a new job.
when her and alejandro were together, she was always the one planning dinners and parties, and she always felt her calmest when doing so. her therapist suggests it gives her the opportunity to have control, something she’d lacked the majority of her life. so, getting a degree in hospitality management and becoming an event planner seems like a no brainer.
she’s twenty-nine when she finally finishes school for the second time. she knows through social media that alejandro has found his way to roswell, new mexico, and seems to have found peace for himself.
they haven’t spoken since he got married, but she ( hesitantly ) reaches out to catch up. she asks how he’s liking the city and what it’s done for him. in the end, she asks if roswell is big enough for the both of them. ❛ I WANT SOME OF THAT PEACE YOU’VE GOT, ❜ she jokes.
to her surprise, he says yes. she goes back to work as a dental hygienist while planning small events on her off time. that, and selling most of the things still remaining in the apartment she never moved out of, seemed to be a bit lucrative. she saves enough money to get her to roswell by november 2020, and her parents were kind enough to chip in what they could to help.
ever since, she’s rented out a small office space for her event planning business. she absolutely adores what she does, even if a lot of her events here have some weird alien theme to them. she’s hoping she can call this place HOME long-term.
PERSONALITY:
kind of standoffish ??? very bad at making friends cus she never really had to put in the effort
that being said, when she’s someone’s friends, she’s fiercely loyal. she will take care of her friends in a way she wished people had taken care of her
i’ll be honest she’s a bit judgmental KJDFHGFKJDHGDFKH but she’ll never say any of it out loud unless asked.
believes she’s too old for any sort of drama so nobody even TRY IT!!!! or do cus it’d be fun teehee idk
very much a perfectionist. tries to channel everything out at work but you can find her home very clean and the layout planned. very symmetrical. everything goes together
can be picky about some things just to be picky. she had to grow up rolling with the punches, so becomig an adult and realizing u don’t have to do whatever just cus other ppl say so its very freeing.
