Pinocchio and his lies

"Do you ever feel like you're not really yourself?" I ask Pinocchio.

Pinocchio said, I was carved in a troubling home,I never really
understood, I was born from hands that built but never held. My father dreamed of me, but not for me. He thought I would be his joy, his salvation. But I was just another thing he tried to fix.

My mother, burdened by her own sorrows, expressed love through duty. She maintained our home meticulously, each chore a silent act of care. Her eyes, often reflected a distant pain, as if she were trapped in memories she couldn't escape. She wanted to nurture, to comfort, but her embraces brief.

School was no different. The letters danced where they should have stood still, and the numbers never quite fit into their shapes. They called me slow, clumsy, strange. Friends were like ghosts—familiar, but never really mine. I followed, I copied, I tried. But I was never enough, never quite real enough to belong.

So I lied. I lied because the truth was unbearable. I spun stories because reality never fit. I told myself I was special, that one day, I'd prove them wrong. That I’d wake up and finally feel real. But the nose grew, and so did the distance between me and everyone else.

Perhaps I was never meant to be real. But maybe that’s the trick—maybe real is never about what we are made of, but what we choose to become. Maybe I was never just wood or flesh, never just a boy or a lie. Maybe I was always something more.

A boy, whispering his own name into the dark, waiting for the echo to whisper back.