I was born, alone. I just didn't know it.

Then I was a child, staring at the back of my own hand, and wondering

Why? How come?

Did everyone? Aren't they all wondering, too? Does anyone care?

I’d look at my hand. And peer at the lines. Squint at the little shapes between the lines. Surely I could see deeper to the cells. I thought about cells, so many cells! I looked at my hand and simply marveled at the sheer fact of being alive. Put my hand over my chest, and felt my heart pumping.

How is this? What makes it go?

What is it to be alive? How does it happen? Everyone else must be trying to find the answer too. Aren’t they? If all the little six year old girls in the world thought about it shouldn’t someone have come up with the answer by now?

I knew this was sad. I knew it was not necessary.

Alone then. Alone in my head, just me and my thoughts.

Not content to be just thinking, so I pondered my thoughts. What are they then? Do they have life, like the cells? Or do the cells have a life like my thoughts.

I thought

We will stop being alone when we talk with our thoughts

If I thought hard enough, someone must hear me. Could I travel the sky on my thoughts, if my body wasn’t earthbound? I knew I could swirl my mind around and around, and float away if I wanted to. I wondered and I swirled. I left the earth once, but it reclaimed me. This, too, was sad. I knew it wasn't necessary.

But I learned to accept it and wish now I hadn't. We are alone. I am me, you are you. I think. You think. We may even be having the same thoughts. But you don’t know, and I won’t know. We are all just alone.

And it is still so unnecessary.