She was sitting on the bus traveling home from a cold day of work when she saw it. A beaten up notebook on a seat a few feet away from her. She looked around, alone except for a young hipster bundled up in a winter coat, arms crossed, headphones in, oblivious to the world.
Letting that be her cue, she moved two seats down and picked up the worn pages loosely bound together. She handled it like she would a newborn puppy, barely able to open its eyes. Gently peeling back the front cover, she glanced in and avoided leaving her mark on this already bruised journal.
She began searching for a name, missing the audacity to delve into the pages without giving the owner a chance at privacy. Page one contained a full layout of patterns. No name. The doodles weren’t the average hearts drawn by a basic girl or song lyrics penciled into corners by a music enthusiast.
The drawings spoke to her through their unique appearance. Most didn’t resemble anything she could recognize, but they looked to be formed by an absent, yet full mind. It made her heart heavy as she tried to read their meaning. They seemed to symbolize the body that left them behind, a full soul of sorrow.
While she hesitated to pursue the rest of the mystery, she felt immediately attached to the possibility that this journal might awaken her being. It wasn’t plain boredom that drew her to this novel, but more so an act of fate.
Unable to describe this feeling, she followed her gut and turned to page two. Half-expecting more doodles, she was surprised by what she saw. A page filled with tiny script handwriting. Not only did these words take up every spec of space within the lines, but every single centimeter of the page was covered.
She began the story and felt inspired by the words that hit her eyes first.
“Something I know to be true doesn’t need validation from others.”
To some, that sentence might be glossed over quickly and thrown into a mental trashcan. But she took that sentence word by word and embedded it within her. It weighed generously on her because it spoke the truth she felt so strongly, but it was phrased more eloquently than she could have imagined.
She continued the passage and was enveloped by the honesty spoken in its words. How weird is it that the feeling of disapproval she had been battling all her life was so effortlessly portrayed in this one page of script? Even weirder: Who is this author she connected with through only written words and no interaction?
She took a deep breath, feeling level headed for once in her life and decided she would make it her mission to find the owner of this masterpiece. She had to find the person who depicted her thoughts without even knowing she existed.