when i was a child, i met my doppelgänger.

Terrifying? I think not.

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Met, though, is quite the stretch. I never saw her and this, being a childhood memory, I am skeptical on the details. I wonder if it’s even real. It could have just been an imagination that has altered my reality—however, it is still very much clear in my head. Like something out a movie; a voice calling me, landing a notebook wrapped with brown paper on my table with my full name written in bold. They said they found it close to the class room window and claimed it was mine.

I never had such a book. Furthermore, the words on the note was written with ink; I was in the primary level and we were only permitted to use pencils. There was no way it could have been mine.

More notes appeared over time. Crisp and neat handwritings, wrapped tightly to avoid tear, my name. I hadn’t taken it seriously; I was a child and rather found it incredibly exciting. I had settled on the fact that maybe it was just a senior who had the same name as me, was a student of my school and had the tendency of loosing her notes or placing them at my class window. I’d even turned her notes into jotters for the fun of it.

But as I think of it now, many years later—a chill forms at the base of my spine.

It is an extremely creepy thought, is it not? Knowing that someone—something—out there looks like you. Shares the same face, thoughts, ideas. Is your splitting image, or could just be coping whatever you do.

They might be watching you right now; probably hoping for an opportunity to take your place; to be you without anyone questioning or doubting. As I write this, my fingers tremble on the keyboard, my ears pick at every sound and my heart tremors in my chest. It’s a very horrific thing to even think about.

The idea of the existence such things has lived through centuries, in stories and in art, centering the same morbid fascination with the mere thought that another version of you lives; maybe in another alternate reality, or the one you’re currently in. Settled somewhere; with your face and your voice and maybe your desires or thought.

But now I begin to wonder; is it all that bad? For there to be someone out there who is like you. At this, my heart kind of settles. I am, in character, a very complicated person. My life is also a reflection of that. I am contradictory, confusing and in all completely human.

As such, if a being that is like me— a refined version of my person, isn’t that better? Why was I afraid? Isn’t it quite comforting to know that there is a version of you that is everything you are not?

If such is the case then, I can only hope.

I hope she is kinder. I hope she knows how to be considerate. I hope her life is filled with all the blessings the world could offer. I hope she is more brave, and consistent and fights for what she wants. I hope that she does not wallow in sadness at the unfairness of life, I hope she wakes up everyday thinking it’ll be for the best. I hope that she can fix everything I hate about myself. I hope she has the answers.

She could be real, or some apparition or come from another timeline. She could still be me. Either way, it doesn’t matter.

It might be wrong to chase perfection, but don’t we all? Even though we know it’s inherently impossible. With someone like that out there maybe I don’t have to; let me bask in my humanity and let her have all the light I could not hold. I will still try to change, might still want to get better but some sort of peace exists with the knowledge that that somewhere, in some version of existence, I am not a failure. I know the answers. I got it right.