Self.

Why do we always come back here?

I thought we were done... -Yeah we always think that.

You think we're fine, great even. You think nothing could get us down. You think we made it all up.

Faked it, just like everything else.

They don't understand that we are not real.

Nothing about us is real.

'Be yourself', they say.

But if only they knew how many of us are in here.

If only they knew that it's a team effort, that everyone must agree.

That not everyone does.

If only they knew that no one waits their turn, we all speak at once, we all feel at once, we all plead our arguments at once, simultaneously, constantly.

They all take turns at playing avatar, they take control one at a time.

When one of us is here no one else can intervene.

We take turns, forgetting the face before us.

Detaching from that which once was.

Their voices still present, they echo in our mind.

But the one playing the character now is not everyone, it's one.

One at a time.

Every one of them has it's own emotion, it's own past, its own thoughts, it's own personality.

Some have always been here, some we created along the way.

But the face you see, the things she says, the things she does they are never truly us.

They are a fraction of time, of space, of a being that lives or has lived or is trapped.

I'm trapped.

They are statistics learned, analysed, our whole life.

Always observing.

When one of us is here no one else is in control. We take turns, forgetting the face before us.

'Be yourself.'

What does that even mean?

It means what character are we playing now? -That's what it means.

Because our selves? That doesn't exist.

Not for us anyway.

You're not even in control are you?

How do you feel now?

Yep, it just got real again didn't it?

We slid down the rabbit hole again.

Once you're here is when you realise...

You never left.

It was an illusion.

When Alice falls down the rabbit hole, is she also still up there?

Still reading, still talking, still dreaming?

Is she both in wonderland and in reality at the same time?

You thought it was real.

You thought I was real.

But we just changed.

She came, she went.

She left you.

Just how I'll leave you.

Someone else will come and we will play her just as we played them all and they will leave too.

Not forever though, they never leave forever.

They just adhere to the others.

And in between the lines. ..

In between the illusion of greatness, the illusion of hope, the realization that you're falling, the realization that you never left, the realization that none of it ever existed, the realization that it was all a dream, that that's all it ever is.

In between all of that... That's where you live.

The intensity and complexity that is our inner world can't be articulated.

It can't be navigated.

It feels like I trick us, they trick me. I trick myself.

Maybe if you spoke to all of them...

Who's the manager? Who can I speak to? Is there anyone I can ask for help?

You mean ways to quiet you?

No. I want to be free. I want to be okay. I want to be normal.

Let me be normal.

Please, I try so hard.

I work so hard.

Who are you talking to?

You.

Me?

You.

You?

Me.

Us.