I can smile now. Although this just happens once in a while.

My plan is to tell stories of far away lands, of obscure spaces, of people I don’t know and had known. At first, I wanted to tell it through different point of views, from a child, an orphan, a witch, a soldier, a friend. Unfortunately, even though I am able to form other personas through these points of view, I see myself in them even more. How can I escape from myself? Or maybe, why do I want to escape from my self?

Maybe, now I understand a little. I wanted to be someone else not me, someone daring, someone radically different from my own. Apparently, no matter how I ran away from me, I go back chasing my own shadow. No matter what point of view I take or character I make, it is always me. Thus, I am happy. I am able to run away, yet always go back with me. I am home. My home is with me. I can always be me with myself.

With this, I have come to the conclusion that in stories I may write for the most part of my life time will always start with the word I. I may not always have to be me; but at least I am being true to myself. I do not have to wear masks or concoct selves for me,; the selves already exist in I. this I am happy.

But if it’s a story, even in my head, I must be telling it to someone. You don’t tell a story only to yourself. There’s always someone else.

Even when there is no one.

A story is like a letter. Dear you, I’ll say. Just you, without a name… I will say you, you, like an old love song. You can mean more than one.

You can mean thousands…

I’ll pretend you can hear me…

I am more than me.

I have a doll. I remember her now.

She owns the most beautiful eyes—black as night— I’ve ever seen in my entire life. Her lashes are thick and her lids close whenever I put her to sleep. She’s a princess with laces and ribbons on her white and pink dress. She has a little gold crown on top of her curly ebony hair. I envy her.

She looks at me, not with piety; but with despair. She implores—she wants to live. How can that be, I asked her, you are a doll?

Little did I know, she envies me more.

Everyday, she casts me a look that my innocent heart can’t fathom. What am I supposed to do? I can never be you. I am but a child. I have to grow up. The world is so vast for me not to see. I want to live. Please, let me be.

From then on, I kept her in a place where I can never see her. I was sad at first, I have nothing but her. Still, I have to do it for myself.

Now, she’s a vague reverie from somewhere, sometime. She was somehow erased from my memory. Until last night. I saw her. She lived, in me, in my dreams. She feeds in my deepest thoughts. She is me.

This maybe one of the things I try to forget. I was a doll—little Ms. Perfect, a little princess, encased in her own box, with no one but her reflection to accompany her. I was looking at myself the whole time. There was no doll. The doll is me.

You see me. You talk to me. You listen to my stories; then comes silence. This is us now. But maybe, this may also be us then. We’ve known each other for so long now. We’ve shared some secrets sifted according to what the other would like to hear.  But thinking of the times we’ve spent, we never really poured our souls to each other. We were never one.

            I never complain though. Still, what we have will never last. Or if it will, is never real. You never showed your deepest thoughts and emotions to me; while I continue to hope that one day you’d do. What am I to do if someone would not trust me? I would not let them to keep me.

            How could I stay in both our worlds? I never stepped into theirs. I hope, they never did see mine.