A Man Apart: Part 1

          I am sitting alone in my room. The atmosphere in here is thick and hazy because the cigarette smoke refuses to dissipate in the stale air. It is dark outside, but I keep the shades drawn anyway. I decide to get up—why I couldn’t say. I have nothing to do, so I begin to walk around the room; I often have nothing to do. The room begins to feel cramped. I can see all of my thoughts swirling about above me, causing the walls to swell and the windows to bulge, though they evaporate as soon as I try to reach up and elucidate them. I have to escape. On my way to the door, I pause at the head-level mirror that hangs adjacent to it, and am struck by a strange face in the room. I jerk my head around, who is in my room? Alarmed, I see no one. Turning back to the mirror, I see the strange face turn in time with mine, and it hits me then: Is that face mine? Still alarmed, I move my face closer to the mirror, and its reflection comes forward to meet it. The face in the mirror is unremarkable, but the brow furrows and the eyes squint, blinking, as I try to understand what I am seeing. It is certainly a face, and those are my thoughts floating around the room, butting heads with one another, contradicting themselves, and evaporating through the ceiling as I realize that they hold no weight, but can those thoughts come from within that physiognomy in the mirror, and is there any way to tell? There are no distinguishing marks on my face or body, they are utterly indistinct. Have I a name? Well, I must. I must have a mother, and I must have a father, but I haven’t the faintest what traces they left in me; am I me, something totally new and unique, or am I them, my parents? If I am not made of them, of what am I made? The laws of the universe dictate that matter cannot be created, so I must be made of my mother, or my father, or both. How much of me is new, then, and how much is recycled characteristics of my forefathers? Am I that same recycled material from my progenitors? and the only things that define me are the particular circumstances that I suffer through?
          Questions of immense gravity and certain immediacy paralyze my mind with an endless series of vollies. I am unable to complete my normal daily activities; I cannot even recall what concerned me yesterday or six months ago. The only thought that presses my mind is to find out who I am, from what I came, both myself and my species. Only then will any actions which I may execute have even the slightest meaning to me, and then only if I set my entire body toward creating the greatest amount of meaning possible…
          At this point, I realize that my mind has wandered off, left my body so to speak, and my body is still standing in front of the mirror, face-to-unknown-face, not staring at the reflection, but turning my gaze around into my own skull to see what is inside. Unfortunately, my conscious mind reigns supreme in here, and though it may nod off for brief moments, allowing an unbridled unconscious reverie, it will inevitably snap back to attention and I am unable to flee from it no matter how I try. I can only flee from this room.