I was lingering out on the pavement. There was a missing person inside of myself and I needed to find him . . . I felt done for, an empty burned-out wreck . . . Wherever I am, I'm a '60s troubadour, a folk-rock relic, a wordsmith from bygone days, a fictitious head of state from a place nobody knows.

I went in search of myself.

I was walking along looking for somebody, and then suddenly I wasn't anymore.

Then again, the story does involve a missing person, and it could well be me. Or you, or practically anybody. As he said to me once, who's not missing?

Before we met, I was as lost as a person could be and yet you saw something in me that somehow gave me direction again.

Some people talk about “finding God,” but that seemed like a severely inaccurate description of what I was experiencing. It felt more like God was finding me. He wasn’t the lost one — I was. I

When I look far enough inside of you, I’ll find me. When I look far enough inside me, I’ll find you.

And all that I was before is out there in the darkness looking for me.

I had (and have?) this void, this cavern of loneliness inside me that I have spent my whole life trying to fill. I was willing to do most anything if that boy would ease my loneliness, I wanted to feel like he and I belonged to each other, but each time we were together and then after, I felt quite the opposite. And still, I was drawn to him.

Love has to come from within, if it is to come at all. And I'm still not there.

I have a feeling that inside you somewhere, there's somebody nobody knows about.

I reached out for something to attach myself to — and I found nothing. But in reaching out, in the effort to grasp, to attach myself, left high and dry as I was, I nevertheless found something I had not looked for — myself.

وجدت نفسي حاضرا ملء الغياب

I lack myself.