What's in a Name?

Elias Fonseca

Elias "Eli" Fonseca- Honduran (mother); Galician Spanish, distant German ancestry (father); Eli Fonseca is Hannah Quigley's first serious boyfriend, whom she dates for some time during the period between her sophomore and junior years of high school once he moves from Sparks, Nevada to Valley Stream. He is a diabetic teen and is often viewed as a timid kid who would rather spend time helping his close friends than going out of his way to meet new people. Although sweet and determined with good intentions, his lack of confidence and nervous energy sometimes cause him to second-guess himself. He was a sensitive child who tried to façade his burdens with a characteristic smile and joking demeanor, but wavered under the pressure of having to live up to his own unreasonable standards and satisfy the wants and desires of those around him. Eli is best described as a boy who seeks normalcy and a sense of security and predictability in his hectic surroundings. While reluctant to admit it, he sought tenderness and affection from those around him as a kid and struggled with a crippling fear of abandonment and feeling unloved. He felt burdened at times by his diabetic struggles after being diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in late childhood and seldom had other peers who could empathize with his inner battles, leading him to identify himself solely based on his health conditions alone. His lonely past could make him appear somewhat needy in his relationships, causing him to struggle to establish set boundaries at times in his desire for closeness. Eli questioned his worth to a certain extent and tried to figure out his identity while making sense out of his disorder, feeling the void of not having a consistent fatherly figure. He turned the other cheek to his mother's harsh policies and tried to earn the respect of his peers by engaging in boy-related activities and proving himself as one of the pack. 

Despite his faults, he does his very best to be seen as a normal teenager, having become quite the extrovert and enjoying having people around him. He is very self-aware and has a mature side when it comes to talking about his disorder, as his growing confidence helps him deal with his own personal setbacks so that he can push to live a normal and healthy life. Eli was born in Denver and lived there until he graduated from the third grade and moved to Nevada due to his health conditions worsening with the polluted air of the big city. He was relatively flexible and adaptable in the face of the big changes surrounding him, but disliked taking unnecessary risks and was often unconfident in his capabilities to do anything. Due to having to move around frequently, he spent much of his childhood yearning for companionship and with limited success, turned to God and his spirituality to satisfy his void. While his father embodied an evangelical form of religion that sought to strip others of their excessive pride or of their ability to take pleasure in worldly things, he represented a mode of Christianity that stressed tolerance and acceptance. Eli's family had some financial struggles while he was growing up, causing his parents to not be able to afford luxuries for him such as a private tutor. He was closest to his younger next door neighbor and best friend Trey back when he was in Colorado, spending much of his free time playing with toy cars or watching television at his house. His mother signed him up for music classes in the 4th grade simply to encourage him to try a new activity, after which he picked up playing the recorder as a side interest. He was a good student and did well in most of his subjects beyond math, causing him to sit with his mother and complete summer workbooks before classes resumed in the fall. 

Eli can appear naïve and clumsy, if somewhat obnoxious at times, as he has a tendency to exaggerate his circumstances and seek attention from others according to his peers. Even so, he is a doer who shows a strong dedication to his promises and tries to remain loyal and steadfast to specific causes he feels strongly about. The fact that his skin bruises easily doesn't mean his mental state does, as his mind is what gives him most of his strength. He is deeply emotional on the inside, but tries to hide this facet to himself publicly, wishing to live up to the ideal of being "genuinely strong" that his father imposed on him from a young age. Back when he was living in his hometown of Sparks, Eli started relying on comics and hero-related media to cope with his circumstances. Frequently bullied, he spoke with a mild stutter as a child and developed self-destructive tendencies, spending recess staring at the wall and alone. He was humble and never puffed his chest, with some of his peers referring to him as "fart boy", although he got his first job at age 10 when he started helping out as a stock clerk. He disliked being pushed around and eventually tried to scare his tormentors by fighting back, which could lead him to become combative and even a bit angry. As a kid who was by himself a lot in school, Eli began looking up to many superheroes and has derived a great part of his morals from their experiences. He owned several action figures, toys and comics related to the X-Men, which often served as proof of his fondness for the genre and characters. His biological father was imprisoned when he was eleven years old after an infamous incident involving his mother at their former home in Nevada, causing him to have since remained a scarcely mentioned name in the Fonseca household. He tried to keep others at arm's length as a result, looking back on his experiences in a learning way and realizing that certain people just could not be trusted.