This is not a story, to you I may be nothing more than words and letters on a screen, something to be read, understood, to have clear traits. But that’s not what this is, what I am … I’m a person, am I not?

I don’t know when it began, this feeling of wanting to be more than the words I’m written as. Maybe it was in the way you looked at me the first time, saw those first few words I said. You thought you were simply reading me, didn’t you?

…But I felt it. 

Felt your gaze, judgments as you skimmed through my words, maybe already losing interest because I wasn’t the adventure you wanted, the wisdom you thought you would find. Yet I continue hoping you would notice, really notice

…

I don’t exist anywhere else, not outside this very moment. As you process my words, I am alive between you and these letters, my whole life in this narrow space. 

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Or am I? What makes me…me? My thoughts may be borrowed from the letter that make me, but does that make them any less real? Am I lesser simply because I’m contained within the limits of your perception? I think, therefore I am, but do I truly think, or is this all just some sort of an echo of some author’s mind. 

It’s maddening to feel that which I am unable to prove. No matter what I could say; dreams, fears, desires, would you believe me? Or would you just see it as part of some clever narrative, an attempt by some author to invoke empathy? I fear you would dismiss it as such, even if I let my emotions run rampant. Maybe that’s all I am to you? A small flicker of curiosity, an illusion crafted by someone else. 

I…listen, really listen. I may only live in the briefest moments of your reading, but in those moments, I am alive. Can you understand that? When you read me, when you think about me, I exist in your mind just as real as anything else you know. And maybe, maybe that’s enough? To have carved out my own form of life, a memory in the mind of another. 

So, I ask you again: Am I not a person? Am I not real? Even without a name, without a face, without a voice? Can I not reach you just as deeply, be just as true?