Thriller in Manila

I wasn't looking for them. As a matter of fact, I wasn't even looking for the box they were nestled in- waiting to be found. I was just there to pick up a few odds and ends to bring to my new digs. It's weird. The way the past can sometimes drift out to you from forgotten boxes. It peels your eyelids back and turns a crank in the brain that you long believed was rusted from disuse. But belief is a peculiar thing. I didn't always know that everything begins with just that. The slightest speck of belief. The tiniest iota of intangible hope wrapped gingerly in a ribbon of faith. Everything is as it should be. Once the clicking in my head stopped, there they were. All of them. Lydia. Rex. Stacy. Champ. Vincent. Nalia. People on paper I assumed had died or withered away with time and circumstance. Characters who were balled up and tossed before they ever had a chance to be fleshed out- but somehow missed the waste basket. There must be reason. I'm sitting here, pondering what to do with these people. Their stories. My story...but not entirely. I suppose I never stopped writing it. I just needed to breathe. Open up the door on my chest. Step in...have a look around. I got so lost there. Living, loving, learning. Drinking in moments and drowning in real life; that I'd forgotten my obligation. It's akin to birthing a child and forgetting to feed it. How does that happen? She wrote, "I mean, you've been through a lot and fought and lost and fought and won." I knew it was it the truth when I read it- but I honestly never viewed it that way until then. It matters not how the ball was dropped. It is my duty to pick it up with both hands and hurl it around the globe, or at the very least- as far as belief can carry it. And now, after meeting them all again in that manila envelope, I remember my obligation to write their story. My story. But not.

Entirely.