With eyes open and closed, everywhere I walk, dolls stand in rows.
I begin and end each day with them. Yet when asked,

“Why do you like dolls?”
I cannot answer.

Within me lies an immature self that has built nothing. Finding and voicing an answer on my own was impossible. This passive, evasive, and pretentious self—despite its arrogance—needed someone else’s help. I remember my father scolding playfully, “Take your finger out!” as he pulled the finger from the doll’s mouth. Though the memory is mine, it was only through another’s question that I discovered the deficiency I had never recognized.

Perhaps in childhood the doll’s finger was pulled out by another’s hand, but deep within my unconscious, my self may still be sucking its finger, waiting for someone without knowing why. That is why I feel such profound kinship with the dolls surrounding me—unable to stand on their own, filled with awkward and artificial gestures.

Through them, I long to find my true self. I want to confront the endless desires and voids that cannot be resolved, and even if I run from them, to discover something that will never abandon me, something that remains by my side without shame or fear. Something eternal. And through that, I hope one day to transform into something genuine.