This evening the clouds were on fire. The sky was purple smoke. Visions like that make you think. Isn't that inconsiderate?

If I held the world up to my ear, would I hear you?...or just the empty ocean? Waves of nothing, or your voice?

I have been here inside my head, looking around and picking through the memories and feelings. I have rummaged through my thoughts and worries, piles of life that don't seem connected but are somehow all parts of mine, trying to find proof that I'm still in here. I know who I am enough to tell people what I am not, but I know less than I should. I know things that I want and things that I feel, I know trivial facts and have a few dusty remembers. I still wonder sometimes though...who am I?

Titles have always comforted me, even in their tediousness and though I have complained of them. Clearly defined roles, though they are roles someone else has defined, have given me a place. I want to define myself, to carve my own corner out of the world.

Belonging to others has kept me safe from the shadows, from the unknowns and dark corners that I have no time to explore...at least not with these people around. Being alone is best defined as being in bad company, because no matter who you find yourself with it is better than being left alone with you. In the presence of others, I can be who they see, and not who I have to learn to see is there. That's me again. I can own those titles they have given me if I just keep looking at them and not looking inside. No...that's not right.

I am owned by them.

I whisper these nothings out into the air, hoping I think that they will make more sense out there than in here. I want many things, but most of all to feel complete. To feel not as a box of pieces that do not match, but as the finished puzzle I have been trying to solve.

I am not good at puzzles.

Put me together, will you? Maybe show me how, just this once, and then I'll do it.

I know that I can do it.