You probably don't know me. Never heard of me. Never thought about me. But believe me, I am important. I am important because everybody's important, isn't that what a wise man once said?
But even without that, I am important. I am a little girl. I don't have a name. Well, actually I do, but you don't need to know that. My name is important, but not for my story.
I am an important, nameless, strange, little girl. A girl who is known by very few people. Even the people which this story should be about, which this story really is about, don't know me. One of them knows a bit about me. He has seen me. But he doesn't know I'm important. Not really. He might be thinking about it, sometimes, but not really. The other one doesn't even know about me. Who does, really?
So you might ask, how can I be important, when nobody knows me? When nobody knows what I have done?
Because I have done something. Not intentionally, not really actively, but I am a reason. The reason. The reason for this story.
When you know think about me, you might think of a little girl, blond hair, tied together, the cheeks rosy from playing outside, the blue eyes shining, smiling. Or you might think of a girl with dark hair falling over her face because she can't be bothered to tuck it behind her ear, sitting in the corner, reading a book. Or maybe, maybe, you even think of a not so little girl, grown up, somewhere in university or school.
I can tell you, you are wrong. There is a reason for that, but the reason isn't important, not yet. Later on.
You don't know me. You don't know anything about me, except that I call myself important. Who does that, and thinks it, really believes it? Not many. But you should, all of you reading it, everybody. Because you are important, at least to one other person. And if you're not, you are important to me. You are anyway. You are important like me.
I am not telling you how I look because that isn't important. Not important to you, anyway. To one other man, it was, but that story is dark. Darker than this one, so I'm not really going to tell it. But I need to tell the conclusion of that dark story, boring you might think, but it's not, it really isn't, because it is the beginning to this one.
The dark story is about a man. A bad, dark man. You might have heard about him, I don't know. A man who likes children. Good, you think, shouldn't everybody do that? No. He's a man who likes hurting children. One tiny word that matters, that changes everything. And I am a child.
I met him. The dark man, and that was it. I don't want to burden you with what exactly happened because that is the dark story, but I am going to tell you, as promised, the result.
And this is where I tell you why you were wrong. Why you were wrong when you imagined how I looked like. Because all these different girls you imagined all had one thing in common. They were alive.
I am alive as well. But not where those girls are alive. I am alive somewhere else, the true me.
I think you know what I am saying. I am saying that I am dead. I am saying that I died during my encounter with the dark man. And because of that I am the reason.
I am the reason that one curious man, one brilliant man, one not dark, but nearly light, a hidden man, went to a morgue.
I am the reason that this man met somebody, who was different. Who was important. I told you everybody was, everybody is, but this second man was important. Important, and brave, and broken, and caring, and damaged. Just as the first man was. Secretly. Behind the blur that hid his light.
I am the reason that somebody else became important, became important, to somebody else and made them better, lighter, brighter.
So maybe you could say that the dark man was important as well. Kind of. Maybe. Because he made me, did something to me, so I became important, so someone else became important.
And then there's no tragedy in death.