i've never felt entirely human. no, not really. before words took on their eloquent meanings, before beautiful moving creatures became "animals" and my mother became "homosapien," i knew i was somewhere else.

perhaps i was something else.

it comes as no coincidence that when i was young, being foolishly taught to fear a force that would come and sweep us all off of our feet, i wondered if i was, in fact, the anti-christ.

but no evil was felt within me. i desired only peace. so i set that aside.

there were times when i would experience so much beauty in the physical aspects of our universe: the pink sunscape of the evenings, the intense green of each individual blade of grass that seemed to flow into an ocean, and even the dull gray of a mourning sky. beauty, everywhere. so much that i found myself in a daze often, wreckless behind the wheel of an automobile, and completely useless when it came to performing any kind of menial task.

at a young age, my favorite past time was to lie in pile of snow and gaze up at the winter sky. and with this, i was perfectly content. but i still knew. or perhaps because of this, i knew.

when my physical body slept, i dreamt of flying.. really flying, soaring above the birds and man-made flight machines. i saw the earth rotate from space as i defied gravity without any sort of external vessel. i spoke with god, and i was limitless, and i found a comfort in sleep that i could not experience in waking life.

and with no outlet to explore these fantastical experiences that were so quickly explained away with the mention of the word "dream," and no worldly activities to contend such amazing feats, sadness settled in. i spent the majority of my time dreaming in full blown technicolor. and i longed to stay there. permanently.

but i was broken, the doctors stated. the open wounds on my face the cause of a probable neurological disorder - not warning signs from a silenced soul wanting to escape, and definitely not my spirit attempting to kill or punish the body for holding it hostage. and as i continued to peel off each piece of skin, i almost believed them.

as life hurried on, various diagnoses: attention deficit disorder, depression, bipolar disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, narcolepsy...

and medicine quieted the knowing, and there were times when the "otherness" was masked. and when i was older, i smoked marijuana until that knowing was sealed tight, until it no longer resonated within me at all moments. and i could then sit comfortably without analyzing, without searching for a revelation that did not seem to be coming.

until one day i had a vision; with open eyes, music blaring, and the fog of marijuana settling my mind.

i saw an enclosed area within my head, in a place where blood does not flow. deeper than that, perhaps on a multidimensional plane. and i saw what looked to be a fetus, worn, and perhaps crippled. but its eye was wide, wide open. it was trapped. this extradimensional fetus had an expression of horror. it had no "breathing room," so to speak. it lived a smothered existence.

all at once, i either recognized or realized that image to be my spirit. the phrase "inside wants out" was repeating in my mind like a skipping CD that would not be quieted.

i knew at that point that a separate part of "me" existed elsewhere.. that it was somehow affected by the "me" i can immediately perceive.

and i knew that it was dying.