So everyone has their own story to tell. Where they’re from, where they are, where they’re going. But it’s not like a book that one can easily open. It takes time to slowly get close and intimate with the person, allowing them to slowly turn the page one by one until they feel close enough to you to reveal their whole life’s work to you.

And sometimes, in the process of this unfolding story, you get overlapping stories. As you learn more and more about a person, you also get some bonus plot lines in the form of their friends, their acquaintances. They too have their stories and adventures. And because no person goes about life without interacting with other people, the story about themselves also includes the stories about others.

I once knew this girl. She loved to talk, and I, being a good person, learned to listen well. She had a million stories to tell; her topics covered the gamut of life. From love and hate to joyfulness and sorrow, I read through her book with a great amount of interest. And sometimes, it would seem as if I missed a few details because, as she retold a story I knew I heard before, there was always something new. This story of hers was dynamic and ever changing.

As I listened, I learned about her friends too. There was this one girl who had issues with relationships. She had a guy friend who strived to attend one of the top schools in the nation. She had another friend who kept backstabbing her no matter what she tried to do. In general, her story is pretty much like the same as anyone else her age. But the difference between her and her stories versus an anonymous person’s similar story is this one little fact: she gave them names.

Overtime, I began to know more and more about each character in her life. The girl with relationship issues seemed to have it on and off again, not knowing how to get away from the addicting poison that seemed to afflict her life. The guy was never perfect enough. Even though she thought he was an amazing genius, she said he belittled himself and was continually harassed by his parents for his infinitesimal shortcomings. The backstabbing friend? She talked bullshit straight to my friend’s face in order to keep up the pretense of a relationship. But with others, words of hurt and hatred would be spread, and these pains would find its way back to my friend. At first, these were merely just names with actions. But they soon had their own character and livelihood and everything necessary to make them seem a tangible part of my life.

Then one day, it all suddenly came to an end. She was out of my life, never to be heard from again. Although that was a tragedy in itself, there was a subplot that was also quite unfortunate. Like a person browsing through random Wikipedia articles, I too was enjoying the link that stemmed from her and led me to know about others. It was as if all those links stopped working and I was unable to continue to read up on other interesting articles. As her book slammed shut on me, so did the books about her friends.

I haven’t been about to find that book since. That book I once read, although quite interesting, has been lost forever. I can never go back to it, not can I ever go back to reading about the others that I had come to know through her. It was almost as if I knew them in person because through my friend, their book was open to me too.

It makes one wonder. What’s his story? How about hers? And as one gets to know the person and their intimate details, other books open up. One can never stop reading because every opened book leads to another, because everyone has their own different unique story.

10.10.08, 2.25-2.58am