A sunny day with a very clear sky and green surroundings. Everything was going good. No one is home today and this feeling to do something constantly on my phone is driving me crazy. Wouldn't it be the best time to tick that thing which has been on my checklist since past so many months , that now I even don't remember why in the first place I wrote it, and this nagging feeling in my subconscious tells me daily to do something about it.

So I go up the stairs into my house attic which was opened last year to do routine cleaning, maybe that is when I decided to clean this one box from my teenage which I haven't touched since highschool. This is an ordinary box full of stuff from that last year of my life when I was actually free but always thought I was in a jail just because of some little extra homework and competitive exams which looked far from my reach and understanding at that time. I opened it and a wave of smell of rotten paper and fugus engulfed me that was when I realized I actually haven't opened the box since I last closed it 10 years ago, when I came home first time after taking that unusual flight to my home from university in my first semester. While moving through the stuff I expected a banner of that introvert tag which I got on my farewell and some old journals some story ideas which I wrote and never looked back and then that of course my old yellow picture book. I opened it, felt nostalgic looking at my pictures and closed it again. Just when I was about to put it back into a new and clean box a note paper half lingered on a page. I opened it. A date was written on the top of that entry and my plane ticket from that unusual flight was stapled. I don't know but every time I think of it something in me tells me again and again to just go back to that day and that airport again but whenever I try to that terminal is just not there.

13 January 20XX , 6:40 pm that is when my flight landed on the airport. I was sleeping exhausted from daily lying to my parents about how I was actually enjoying my college life when in reality it was not less than a hell wherein I daily felt left out, invisible and trash because of my low self esteem and that voice in my head telling me that I shouldn't have even born. This voice turned into a full blown shout when my so called caring and empathetic roommate bullied me in front of her cool and chill friends to climb the social ladder.

I woke up with a jerk not knowing where it came from, looked around my self and found an erratic silence. Everybody around me was sleeping too. Nothing weird in this but when no announcement was made to move or unbuckle our seatbelts even after 15 minutes of landing that's when things started to bother me. So just as any sensible person would have done I walked towards the exit and got down finding the gates already open and found the silence inside was nothing compared to this. Not a single soul existed in this world expect me and these passengers. I walk in the long runway sometimes run to and finally reach the airport gate, opened it in a hurry and found it black. All black just nothing just oblivion and black. With no other option I entered it and found my self in a luminous setting.

That place was full of people rushing to the check-in, some people arguing ,some crying and some just reading a book and suddenly everything was back to normal. I wanted to know why everything happened which I just experienced that is why I went to the nearest airport official I could find and initially whispered then spoke and then shouted but no response not a single glance. Irritated with his ignorance towards work went to another and then another but experienced the same indifference. So I gave a visit to the washroom to splash water on my face expecting all this to be a dream and wake up but there was no reflection of mine on the mirror. What a stupid mirror couldn't even show people their real faces. Checked my phone camera and found no picture of mine. What a stupid phone just shows people what they expect. Just when I was exiting I ran into a person and passed through them. That is when the panic kicked in I realized this is not something I can ignore anymore its happening, its difficult to say but am I really invisible and this time not metaphorically? or maybe better, dead? no this cant happen. I know. I just walked here saw those people. Those people, that flight, I should just go back there but that gate was not there anymore and when I turned with disappointment I saw her. She is me. facial features like me but not looking like me. She looks beautiful. She is wearing confidence. I follow her and observes her.
She talks nothing like me she appears to knows who she is, she has this charm she is everything I ever dreamt of she is not me but a better me which I know I can never be. She goes to her room after talking to her parents or my parents. They have this proud emotion in their eyes for her , she had these friends over her house which I last had when I was maybe 2 years old? She took a cab home which she herself booked. Amazing. She goes back to her room and cries, uncontrollably and non stop my bewilderment reaches its peak when she looks at her in a mirror and calls herself a trash. Something I always call myself. Well we have something in common. But why she would do that? I would do anything to have a life like hers then why she would curse herself. I would love her anytime then why is she not loving herself, and then my dream girl utters something, "Why can't I be like the cool kids?" That is when it hits me. It is never enough. We are never enough. We are sentient being with no sense of ourselves but only of what others are.

Just then I heard a loud shout of my or her name and found myself back in that flight. Went home shaken, had dinner, kept the ticket in that old book closed the box and slept after a heavy day and a bad dream.
when I was about to stick the page and keep the old book again I found a note or perhaps a secret note which I have never seen before and don't remember writing it on the back of that page which said, " You were there, trust me you were there, and now I am here to learn what you learnt that day. Help me the way I helped you. I need it now".