The world has gone and left me behind. I had spent so long in my own mind, that when I finally came back out, everything had changed. I had finally become someone I could look in the mirror, but no mirror could show me a life not slipping by like sand between my fingers.

We're not running toward something, are we? We're all running from something. We're afraid to face it, so we try to cover as much distance from it as we can. But I'm starting to think that nothing is enough. Even light years away, our problems will catch up to us. What then? Perhaps it is better to face our fears.

There is something compelling about solitude. But we are social creatures. Sooner or later, proud isolation turns to bitter loneliness, and we find ourselves trudging back towards the elaborate dance of human society. Some of us can join right back in. But some of us have been away for so long——for our entire lives, for people like me——that we can only stand and watch. What, then? What of the ones who have never truly known companionship and compassion? What is our flaw? That we do not have what we long for, or that we long for what we do not have?