i remember back in gradeschool when our teachers used to bring us to the library and let us borrow one book and read it for a week.
each of us would come running to the nearest table where the librarians scattered all types of readables for kids.
comic books, adventure books, sweet valley kids, fairy tales..
of course, i would always lay my hands on the big bulky ones, where i can read as much as i want in just one book.
i would have a big smile plastered on my face and from then on count the hours till i have to go home and read my treasure.


* * *


i've stumbled upon a story book when i was sleeping over at a friend's house.
she has this outsized book compiled with different children stories.
i smiled at the sight of it.
i've always wanted to have one when i was young, hopeful, and imaginative.

i browsed through it, and came across with The Velveteen Rabbit by McCarthy Cybrary.

here's a peek of the story:



THERE was once a velveteen rabbit, and in the beginning he was really splendid. He was fat and bunchy, as a rabbit should be; his coat was spotted brown and white, he had real thread whiskers, and his ears were lined with pink sateen. On Christmas morning, when he sat wedged in the top of the Boy's stocking, with a sprig of holly between his paws, the effect was charming.

There were other things in the stocking, nuts and oranges and a toy engine, and chocolate almonds and a clockwork mouse, but the Rabbit was quite the best of all.

The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

"I suppose you are real?" said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the Skin Horse only smiled.

"The Boy's Uncle made me Real," he said. "That was a great many years ago; but once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always."

* * *


Isn't that wonderful?
To feel Real.
to have someone see you as you are.
to have someone see you beyond your tattered fur and worn-out seams.
To be Real.
is to feel every thing.
to experience it all.
joy. love. loneliness. pain.
and then it would all be worth it.
because you know
you've done it all.
and you were Real.