I realize now, after four years of continuous posts, blogs, entries, that I have candidly shared my life with millions of strangers. It’s funny that I’m just thinking of this fact now, or maybe I just ignored it all along. I believe that becoming an open book was something I enjoyed and still enjoy. It is a way of getting attention, of being the spoiled kid I never really got to be, the one that got all the attention. I am also selfish. I have opened pieces of my life, fiction or non-fiction, fabricated or real, realistic or fictitious, for anyone to read. If that’s not a selfish act, then what is it? I feel a little powerful despite the sense of trepidation that I always portray. This sense of vulnerability has made me braver than I thought. Suddenly I have opened up in my own reality, my everyday life where I’m most often a closed book. All this writing has made me believe that being myself is not so bad, being imperfect is actually a good thing, that people pay attention when I act like myself. Just like I allowed myself to write a piece of fiction about a mother and her Lolita, two characters who were made-up simply from my imagination, I’ve allowed myself to say and not just write the things I want to say. Just as I allowed myself to reveal my deepest fears, like the fear of being a mother, a bride, a symbol of attachment, or of being alone in a city like New York, I’ve also allowed readers to see my most sacred imaginations. As most good readers know, all writers, even those who fabricate stories, have experienced or have thought about the things they write. By permitting my readers to see my imagination, I can no longer hide the real me, the one that only my faithful readers know.