Where is the Wonder, Where's the Awe?

Where is the wonder, where's the awe?
Where's dear Alice knocking on the door?
Where's the trapdoor that takes me there,
where the real is shattered by a Mad March Hare?

Where is the wonder, where's the awe?
Where are the sleepless nights I used to live for?
Before the years take me,
I wish to see the lost in me.

- I Want My Tears Back, Nightwish


While my sister was cleaning up a few days ago, she found some of my stuff from high school. They were drawing books and notebooks and brown envelopes that contained my stories.

I wrote a whole lot in high school. And it wasn't bad, actually. And I wrote in both English and Filipino. I filled notebooks with prose. I wrote poetry. I typed (yes, typewritten. Those were what the brown envelopes contained) scripts. My drawing books were filled with characters I loved. And I loved them as entities, and not as mere works of art. I drew costumes. I made back stories. They were alive to me. And I lived in their world half of the time. Maybe more. Stories never left me. I always had a story. In fact, they were so many that I couldn't stick to one. I couldn't sleep without a story playing in my head. Stories were my world.

What happened between then and now?

Suddenly, I find myself running a game company. Suddenly, getting my work out there doesn't seem like such an impossible feat anymore. But where is the heart I once had? I still have stories. Not as many as before. But they're still there. I still like stories. I still read, i still watch. But the near-obsessive force that drove me to learn HTML amd JavaScript just so I could make a fanpage for my favorite story isn't there anymore.

I guess on the one hand, that's good because I'm more level-headed now. But on the other hand, I miss it. I still seek the thrill stories (whether they're mine or others') used to give me. I know that I need a clear head and a slightly icy heart to make decisions to push a piece of work to its best. But I wish, oh, how I wish, that I'd be able to feel that almost-obsessive force when making a story again.

Where is the wonder?

Where's the awe?

Before the years take me, I wish to see the lost in me...