‘If you weren’t you, who would you be?’
She asks herself, he asks himself, and they ask eachother.
“If you could be anyone, who would you be?”
“Who would you be?”
If they think hard enough, they come up with some kind of answer. It might be a celebrity, a close friend or family member, it might be some random stranger that they think has a better life than them. But what they do decide to go through their life as the person they would most like to be.
So they do just that. They watch and learn, and they walk and talk, and they copy and they learn and they pick up habits, and before long, they are somebody else.
Different attitude – could be better, could be worse, different looks – different hair styles, hair colours, make up, clothes, stereotypically trying to be someone they’re not. They try and pick up their person’s accent, way of speaking, and they perfect it. And you know what they’re doing? They’re running away from who they are. And you know why? No. Because they don’t tell anyone.
These people, for all you know, have been bullied. Told every day that they’re ugly, that they’re stupid, that they don’t matter, and what do you do? Join in? Walk away and ignore it? Focus on your own problems?
Or these people, you think, might just be some crazed up fan that don’t have a life of their own so they have to steal others? Well maybe they just can’t seem to fit in...
So these people, this boy and this girl, walk through life pretending to be something and someone they’re not. And at first they succeed. The slip into someone elses character like a second skin and don’t think about it. Kind of like an autopilot – if they don’t think, they don’t see, they don’t feel, they don’t change. And what once was an escape, is now an obsession. If your not yourself, no one can hurt the real you. Or can they...?
Then one day, this boy and this girl, come across this man. And they don’t need to know his name because they already know it. It is written on their hearts. And this man starts talking. And their hearts start to heal. The name that was written on their hearts? It was so faint it was nearly impossible to make out. But as this man, this man with his name written on everyone’s hearts, started to talk, they felt something change inside of them. The people that they were tryong to be didn’t seem so important anymore. The things that bothered them suddenly were easy to overcome. The question that were always there, tormenting them, were answered in one simple phase. And the name written on their hearts – it became so clear it was the centre of their lives. No longer the reason they lived was for the people they were trying to be, the people that weren’t them, but this man, he was their reason for being the people they were.
And this change didn’t happen in a click, didn’t happen in a moment, but over a time. And that is a good thing. Because it means that you saw these children change from who they aren’t to who they are. Day by day, the facade was dropped. The accent slipped, coloured contact lenses taken out, hair dyed down in shades, talking more like they used to, until – bit by bit – the pretence fell away. And there they were again. They had come the whole journey.
No one goes through their life without trying to be someone else, but...
“If you could be anyone else, who would it be?”
You know what the boy and the girl’s answer was? It was “no one.” And you know why? Yes. Because they told everyone.
THE END
