Writing was easy for me, once, when all I had to do was write what I love and love what I wrote.

As a child, I was afraid of plenty. The dark, scary ghost, being lost, being left alone in an orphanage because I was too uruly for my parents to handle. But as a child, I hadn’t known of other people’s judgment. I love to write, so I wrote what came to my mind, and that was enough.

But then I grew up, and people are no longer so simple. I learnt to notice how my friends, my family lost interest when I began to talk of what I was passionate about. They still nodded, they still smiled, but their faces were stiff, and the air between us went stale the longer I talked. So I stopped.

It wasn’t their fault, they had their own interests, and I had mine, but the seeds have been planted, and I learnt to fear what other people think.

Then I got a job, and writing what I love was no longer enough. My ideas were shut down, my papers got tossed aside with a single glance, my mind became a mess of recycling and revising as nothing seemed to be good enough.

I forgot what it’s like to write just because I love it. All I could think of was, “I’m just not good enough.”

That was a time in a past long gone. I found those like me since then, those who write what they love because they love what they wrote, but I would forever be left with scar.

So I am here today, fearing the unknown, and that unknown is the judgment of others.

I laugh. I love. I cry.

I think. I dream. I try.

I fall. I rise. I survive.

I live, you see?

I live.

I am the girl you see shrinking into herself so she will go unnoticed.

I am the girl who hides behind locked doors just for a chance to breathe.

I am the girl who devours books and stories because that is the only way for her to feel.

I am the girl who has forgotten how to live.

I run, because that's all I can do.

The world moves under my feet like a powered-up treadmill.

My hands are incapable of clutching the rail. They are barely tethered there by fragile strings on the brink of snapping--wisps of threads that stretched out of sight, onto parents rarely met, a house on mortgage, texts of thanks and please forget this from people who kissed me on a one date night . . .

If I dare to slow down, to search for a moment to catch my breath, catch my thought . . .

I would bend. The cords would break and I would tumble.

For brief seconds of hope, I would scramble--desperately, frantically crawling on bruised palms and knees--but the world's merciless force would inevitably drags me under.

It would crush me.

So, I run.

-

I run, because if I stop, I would fall.

And I won't get back up again.

She smiles, so shy, so sweet.

Silly.

Secretly, she’s so sad.

Selflessness shan’t spare such sorrowful soul.

Still.

She stands, shielding spirit so soft, soon shattered.

Silently, she says, “Smile.”

I remember when you said dad would come back. You also said you'd never leave me like he did, mom.

I believed you. Even now, I still do.

So, where are you two?

People always say, “Don’t lose hope. There is someone, someday, who will love you unconditionally.”

So, I stood here and waited as time ticked by.

Nobody came.

I realize too late that there is only one person who can love me unconditionally.

That person was meant to be me.

The little mermaid collects bits and pieces from the land she loves.

One day, a storm rolls by, a ship falls apart. With it, down comes a man with two legs and ten little toes.

He is the loveliest thing she has ever seen. There is only one thing left to do.

He struggles as he drowns, and she brings him under.