Some stories don’t ask to be remembered.
They simply become part of the person reading them.
I still remember the first book I ever finished.
It was the summer before seventh grade.
A quiet afternoon.
Two hours after lunch.
Outside my cousin’s house, my friends were playing. I could hear one of them singing from the kitchen while the others chased each other beneath the afternoon sun.
But I never joined them.
I couldn’t.
There was a story waiting for me.
I still remember the scent of its pages.
The rough texture of the paper beneath my fingertips.
The way each chapter slowly pulled me farther away from the world around me.
For the first time, reading no longer felt like a school assignment.
It felt like living another life.
I wasn’t the main character.
Nor did I want to be.
I was the quiet observer.
The invisible witness.
Someone privileged enough to see everything unfold from a place no one else inside the story could occupy.
There was something magical about knowing what the characters didn’t yet know.
About anticipating heartbreak before they felt it.
About hoping they would make different choices, even though the ending had already been written.
When I closed the book, I carried more than its story with me.
I carried a question.
Could my own words one day make someone feel the way this book made me feel?
That single question never left me.
Looking back now, perhaps my writing journey didn’t begin with that book.
It began years earlier—with a diary.
With little letters to myself.
With scribbled thoughts no one else would ever read.
But that ordinary afternoon gave those quiet habits a direction.
Soon came poems.
Short stories.
News articles.
Essays.
The stories became longer.
The characters became deeper.
The worlds became larger.
And somewhere along the way…
Writing stopped becoming something I did.
It became someone I was.
Today, this little corner of the internet exists because of that little girl who couldn’t stop writing after finishing one unforgettable book.
I’ve learned that stories are powerful in ways we rarely notice while we’re reading them.
Some comfort us.
Some challenge us.
Some quietly heal us.
Some answer questions we never found the courage to ask.
Others simply remind us that we were never alone.
Most stories are forgotten.
But a few remain.
They stay with us for years.
Sometimes…
For a lifetime.
That book never became my story.
But it helped me discover my own.
It made me believe that perhaps my words deserved to exist too.
That the little girl filling notebooks with diary entries wasn’t wasting her time.
She was preparing.
Preparing for the stories she hadn’t yet learned how to write.
If one day someone closes one of my books carrying the same question I once carried—
“Maybe I can write too.”
—I think that would be enough.
Not because they remembered my name.
But because my words became part of their courage.
When I think about this journey, I realize it has never belonged to me alone.
It belongs to my mother, who saw something in me long before I recognized it in myself.
To my father, who believed in my dreams long before I had anything to show for them.
To my sisters, who kept walking beside me even when they couldn’t see where my path was leading.
Everything I write carries pieces of them.
Pieces of home.
Pieces of the little girl who grew up in a quiet farming community in the northern Philippines, believing that notebooks could become doorways.
I owe this life to her.
The little girl who filled diaries with thoughts too big for her age.
Who treasured stories as much as ribbons and medals.
Who cried over novels.
Who memorized poems.
Who believed words could change people, even before she realized they had already changed her.
Perhaps one day…
I’ll become the woman she imagined.
Perhaps one ordinary afternoon, another little girl will pick up something I’ve written.
She’ll miss playing outside because she can’t put the book down.
She’ll close the final page carrying a dream she didn’t have before.
And years later…
She’ll write a story of her own.
If that happens—
Every late night.
Every unfinished draft.
Every rejection.
Every quiet moment spent believing in words…
Will have been worth it.
Because the greatest stories don’t end when the final page is turned.
They continue living inside the people who read them.
Mine began with a novel entitled Please Believe I Am Truly, Madly, Deeply in Love with You.
It was a story about young love.
Forbidden nights.
Impulsive decisions.
Second chances.
And choosing love despite everything.
It wasn’t simply the first novel I finished.
It became the first story that ever reached into my heart and quietly whispered,
“Maybe you can do this too.”
Looking back now, I realize that I didn’t just leave that afternoon carrying a finished book.
I walked away carrying a dream.
One that opened the doorway to my artistry.
One that, years later, would lead me here—
Still writing.
Still believing.
Still hoping that somewhere, someone will finish one of my stories and begin their own.
